I was lucky enough to meet Dee Caffari a few months ago. She's a yachtswoman, the first woman to sail single-handedly around the world the 'wrong way' i.e. against the prevailing winds and currents. 

At one point on her voyage, when she was really in the middle of nowhere, the people closest to her were the asronauts in the Space Station rather than anyone else at land or sea. Had she fallen overboard or had an accident there was no-one on earth that could have saved her. Her voyage took I think around five months during which time she saw almost no-one.

Could you be on your own for so long? Would you be lonely? Have you been lonely and was it physical isolation or emotional?

I don't think I could be alone for that long ill be honest with you. But we are lucky we live in an age where you can be in a Gerr camp in Mongolia or on a floating island in the middle of Bolivia but there is still internet access or satellite phones. I think sometimes, just to hear a loved ones voice can help you through tough times and I remember just last year after I got robbed in Buenos Aires I was feeling pretty horrible so I called my dad and just him saying "mate be strong, you will be home soon enough and I love you buddy" really helped me. Funny thing is that I called him 2 days later after the ex dumped me as well. He really did help me through a pretty rough couple of days, and even being 16,000 kms away from him, just his voice helped me a little bit.
As for sailing around the world, that would take so much guts and determination and wow, what an experience it would be hey !!!

Being alone need not make you feel lonely. Loneliness is a negative emotion. Don't think loneliness, think solitude: time for quiet reflection on who you are, where you are, and the world you inhabit.

I love meeting new people and being with old friends, but every so often, I must be alone. But as for sailing alone around the world, after reading Joshua Slocum and Francis Chichester, I don't think that's for me.

Loneliness is a state of mind, not a place.  Being alone, or having solitude, does not lead to loneliness.  I think that loneliness is one of the saddest places to be, and as many above have said, you can often feel it in the company of others.

We are at nature, pack animals, and we need the security of knowing where we are, and who we are.  Some need it more than others.

I am lonely - surrounded by friends and rellies, I am desperately lonely.  That is how I am.  So - to all of you other lonely people - sending kind thoughts.

Jo

Wolfie, been wanting to reply to this one since the day it appeared. Find it a hard one. I think some of the descriptions and explanations above have some of it spot on. Complicated business.

Think I am fairly sure however that being alone in a challenge like a lone boat trek for months on end is different to what many of us experience. There is a definate end in sight and you chose to do it quite consciously. Dangerous and life threatening of course but I think the challenge itself must be like almost having another person there. Simple survival with only your own resources must be hellishly frightening but I think the fear might blot out the kind of gnawing desperate cry in the dark that some of us describe.

I can relate to some of the stuff about people failing to make a connection, even in a crowd. Feeling the odd one out all the time. As for being alone alot. Yes the state of mind matters. I quite like my own company alot of the time and am mindful of the many times I am thankful my time is my own. It was not always the case. On the other hand when it goes on for days without an end in sight like the holidays I am sometimes screaming at the wall. No connection with anyone living. Not even by phone. At it's worse it can literally tip the sanity. An actual physical pain in my stomach.

It is no surprise to me now that long term solitary confinement is the most effective and extreme torture used by human kind. A truly fantastic film that graphically goes some way to helping you imagine what it must be like for years on end is  'Murder in the First' - Gary Oldman and Kevin Bacon. Being based on a true vicious miscarriage of justice in the states it tears the heart, and the guts, out. Very hard to watch not least because as I do so my mind wanders to the people, some in their own prisons, who are enduring those rats gnawing their own gut.

Lonelyness can be a kind of hell on this earth. Self imposed or not.

An inadequate response I feel but a try.

summer x