After waiting 10 days on Amami Oshima for Typhoon No. 21, it finally blew in. All week long, locals had dropped by our boat to inform us that it was not safe tied up where it was — at the guest berth at the sea station. But when we inquired where we could move it to, no one knew. We couldn't leave Amami Oshima until the typhoon passed, unless we risk getting caught in the middle of it. So we waited. And waited. Until finally, the typhoon came.
The captain and skipper slept on the boat while the rest of the crew took accommodation on land. "It was a wild and wooly night!" the captain told us later, as he surfaced from the cabin the next morning after the typhoon. He had been up on deck six times over the night to adjust ropes as the boat pulled and heaved on her lines. But we were lucky — the brunt of the typhoon, contrary to predictions, had missed us. Not only that, but the tropical storm behind it, which had turned into Typhoon No. 22, had spun off to the east and was already gone by the time the slow moving Typhoon No. 21 arrived.
Finally, we were cleared to sail on to Okinawa! But Typhoon No. 21 had selfishly taken all the wind with her, leaving us with barely a breeze. As it was the first smooth sailing we had experienced since we left the Seto Inland Sea over two weeks ago, we just enjoyed the tranquility that allowed us to cook, eat and relax on board. We sailed all through the night and by sunrise, we could see Okinawa Island in the distance.