Musings from a Fatigued Mind July 9

We are now in the wind with the kite up and doing 9's and 10's, with the occasional 12's. Frog just did the first crash so at least that is behind us.

I always find it interesting how little life one sees out here on the ocean. We had the usual dolphins and birds getting of shore. Of note is the humpback whales we ran into 2 days out. One was apparently a juvenile and took an interest in us. It kept approaching and going by. At one point it swam along side about 15' off just below the surface so we could see it through the clear water, that was pretty neat. The next day just before dusk a pod of dolphins came by. By comparison these were not the close in small weak lethargic dolphins we get inside the islands. These were free range, open ocean robust specimens. They fairly rippled with muscle and were very large. When they came out of the water they just didn't stick their head up, they jumped out and cleared the surface by 4 feet in unison and took a good look at us. Then they came over and played in the bow wave before going off to do what dolphins do. Other than about 5 birds over as many days that's about it for fauna sightings.

Now a word about our watch schedule and how that works. We have 7 guys and stand 3 hour watches with 4 hours off. You come up when its your turn and spend the lst hour trimming the sails. The 2nd hour you steer the boat and the 3rd hour you do what ever needs doing, chatting, helping trim or preparing a meal. The 3rd hour of the watch that falls on 6am, 12 noon or 6 pm fixes chow. The big one is dinner. Last night was my turn and I fixed Marsha's (thanks Marsha) chili verde. Generally we have frozen, pre prepared meals for dinner and the process is thus: get a big pot and boil a couple gallons of sea water to heat the pouches of vacuum packed dinner. Last night the seas were confused and the boat was really moving so I had to strap myself in front of the stove so as not to go flying across the cabin. So now you're strapped in front of a couple of gallons that swing wildly on the gimbaled stove. The stove and the pot swings one way and the opening of the pot is pointed right at your crotch then swings the other way under the cabinet behind. I had the pouch of rice and one of chili verde meat in the water heating up. When I deemed the food sufficiently hot I took the rice out and put it in the sink to stay put, then I tried to lift the chili pouch out. Well, the pouch seal failed and bunch of sauce and meat went into the hot salt water. Crap, I thought I lost half of the dinner. I decided to try to salvage what was left in the bag and probably got half in a bowl undiluted. The half was plenty diluted. I thought maybe the meat chunks would still be good and fished one out to try. Not too bad. Fished the rest out with a strainer and added it to the surviving chili. It proved good with compliments all around and there was still enough for burritos this morning. Clean up is the usual fight to keep things from flying across the cabin while trying to clean them.

While I'm thinking about it, thanks Marsha, Tamara, Dori, Diana, Doris and Liz (in no particular order) for all the prep work on the food and the support to make it possible for us men folk to be able to torture ourselves like this in the name of fun. See you all in Hawaii.

Oh, a sailor's life for me.

John