Friday, July 5
Before I even got the previous 24 hours logged, James ruptured…a fingernail-bed cyst. Whew. This kind of medicine we can handle. Wish I’d gotten a picture of the odd amber bead of protective gel his body had created for whatever unwelcome material had made it deep enough to be noticed.
Bodies, wow.
James’ 1800-1900 watch
It’s been gloomy all day and rough. Takes a toll on my mood. We did a double gybe to let a tanker pass safely and by the time we were settled back on our original tack…the sky had cleared!
Dena’s 2100-2400 watch
I got a sunburn on my face and neck by ignoring sunscreen on a cloudy day. On my last watch, the sun was low enough to peek under my hat brim so I turned up the collar on my flannel shirt and used that top button I always thought was vestigial.
No worries now. A good washcloth cleaning erased the too-late layers of sunscreen and I won’t see the sun again until 0900 tomorrow. I can be lax about washing up but, on a passage like this, any little way to make my body feel good is worth the effort.
The same weather conditions continue…winds in the teens with increases and decreases that are pretty easy to keep up with. All that’s required is the occasional adjustment of the Monitor control lines on the tiller, allowing for increased or decreased weather helm.
The waves are still taxing. James wrote an article about the reasons following seas aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. These are pretty steep because of the continental shelf poking out at the cape we just passed. Here’s hoping that they get easier to take when we’re back in 3000m of water.
Saturday, July 6
Dena’s 1100-1200 watch
James is napping like a champ after a long night’s work. I definitely slept better than he did, but it was an exhausting couple of darkness watches passing and being passed by dozens of ships. Maybe more than a hundred, since we regularly had twenty AIS signatures on the screen at a time.
I had weird dreams and the strangest experience waking up that I have ever experienced. I had no memory. It took a while to piece together who I was, who I was with, and the where took longer than all the rest put together. I started feeling mildly panicky before I remembered that we were underway between the Canaries and Cabo Verde.
I suspect it has something to do with the completely unusual smell in the forepeak. We’ve used unscented laundry soap since we discovered it was a thing, but the laundromat in Yaiza is the type that includes the soap and softener. They’re strongly scented (reviewers love the smell so not everyone is unhappy with the service) so we dried the clothes extra trying to get rid of as much as we could.
Still, the cabinets on either side of the bunk are full of smells I associate with short stay rentals and hotels. It seems possible that my confusion stemmed from that. It’s also possible that my marbles have been shaken so hard over the last three days that I had to go looking for them.
Here’s hoping I haven’t lost any.
Noon position: N 24° 11.019’ W 017° 08.271’
Distance noon to noon: 109.3 NM
Average speed: 4.6 kn
Trip distance covered: 318.3 NM
Distance to destination: 666.6 NM
