At a stand-still as the world moves by

Solo sailor Lia Ditton shares her mind 75% of the way through her central London OSTAR re-enactment

I am 24 days into my odyssey to 'virtual' America. With a week of high winds and many reefs, the boat has moved maybe an inch, the stretching of trucking strops audibly rasping against the beams at night, as the boat attempts to make a desperate dash for freedom. There is a crack around one of the anchors which pins the trucking strops to the ground. While I physically travel nowhere, images of on board activities are beamed via the internet to Galerie Mourlot in New York, (and also here) - it is the event this time which is trans-Atlantic.

"What is it like here at night?" said the actress passing by, to the single-handed sailing sculptress, [as coined by TheDailySail.com]. Turning sideways, her eyes scanned the three buildings and scoured the courtyard. The sea voyage sparked a similar question, "What do you do at night?" For a moment I compare the two, before answering: "Quiet". In that famous photograph of a major intersection shot at night, where the car headlights stream into each other from long exposure, I am like the photographer, standing still, observing. When the college empties at the end of the day and the students who initially loiter and chatter on the steps finally drift away, there is a comparable stillness, as if the cars in the photograph had parked and turned off their headlights. Yet the soundtrack plays merrily on - the ambient noise of sirens wailing in the distance and the low rumble of traffic hurtling by. Life is simply elsewhere.

"Every 20 something student does that!" My uncle had laughed when I told him that my offshore sleeping pattern was as follows: I stay awake all night and go to bed just after sunrise. There was an indescribable temptation to do that here - like Tilda Swindon sleeping in a glass case at the Serpentine Gallery for Damien Hirst. One, two, three am, I potter around the cockpit, in full foul weather gear when it is cold, a witness to the fact that never the same windows of the college are illuminated with blue hues of projectors and computer screens; always different hallway lights left blazing.



'READY TO EAT REAL MEALS' it states on my packet of lunch: ‘Beans and Sausage in tomato sauce,’ from Wayfayrers. As of yesterday I began to interpret this is in a new way, [Are you] ‘READY TO EAT REAL MEALS? To which the answer is definitely, ‘Oh yeah!’ On an instant diet that contains far too many phaseolus vulgaris [baked beans] and MSGlue, I am extremely grateful to the continuous high performance of the 12v CPU extractor fan. However much I may try and convince you, that peering inside the composting wonder-loo is nearly as rewarding as opening the oven door to inspect rising bread, my own personal brand of fertiliser is developing nicely! Both Boris [the fly] and his girlfriend Becka [the smaller fly] have on these grounds sadly departed!

Alone offshore, my dreams consisted of food fantasies [being air-dropped Dominos pizza for example] mingled with almost comic human action; my dreams here, to pardon the pun, are far more grounded! I have been writing them up on the inside skin of the hull with a whiteboard marker. I have nearly run out of space. The three most laughable were related to my current state of living - in the dream I was having a wash with a water allowance of one 2 litre bottle. This was outside a building. Someone came out of the building and pointed out that there was a shower inside the building and that I could use it! In the second I was sleeping in the forepeak sail locker as I have been, except that the rest of the boat had transformed into an Oyster 82, also on the hard at an angle - but why was I sleeping on the floor in discomfort when there were perfectly good cabins with 'proper' beds and white sheets?! The third was a hyper-active dream, where I was in a Mini Transat yacht yet re-enacting my OSTAR experience blow by blow with a hydraulic set up to tilt the boat for port or starboard tack; the log book [which I didn’t keep] open and used for reference.



Aside from climbing the mast at least once, my goal everyday is to remove the peel of each orange in one piece. [Oh my, what has my life come to?!] My strange land voyage has forced me to live with the waste I would otherwise deposit over the side and so cleaner, more-intact rubbish is easier to string together and hang out on the stern safety rail. One visitor proclaimed that my daily rubbish hangings were the “real work of art” and that the boat with its mesh sails at an impressionistic angle, was merely the frame! I was a captive audience!

‘WATER FINDS ITS OWN LEVEL,’ reads the illuminated text on the glass front of the ‘Chelsea Space’ Gallery. I’m not sure what it means or why it is there and I can’t visit the exhibition to satisfy my curiosity, but glowing in luminous orange letters, it seems prophetic; a message beaming out of the darkness. The tide is rising. The Tate like-wise has a sign, where the letters swell into barely legible and then shrink back to re-form the word TATE. 2250.9 virtual nautical miles have passed under the dagger board! Perhaps it is time to reach land, safely home and dry.

As a result of the exhibition, ‘Absolute Solitude: One Woman, One Boat,’ I have been invited to dine on a “Slice of Reality.” This is not an insanity pill contra the effects of self-confinement on a boat in Westminster, but the sculpture on the Thames, by Richard Wilson.

To read more about Absolute Solitude: One Woman One Boat - click here . Readers have 24 hours left to see Lia in situ before her exbihit next to the Tate Britain in central London ends and she steps back on to terra firm tomorrow night (Friday at midnight).