Saturday, November 23
We definitely busted right past the midpoint of this journey and now we’re about an hour from a “distance to destination” of fewer than a thousand miles. If we get the wind in the forecast as reported by the sailor on the 60-something-foot sloop, we’ll have more than half of that covered in the next 5 days.
Oh, that’s Thanksgiving! I guess we’ll see!
The food boredom has already set in. We’re eating hard boiled eggs, tuna, and one of three kinds of cheese with most meals. There are the pasta nights and smeaty bean dip nights (after a rice mit Scheiße so we can have leftover rice with it).
Actually, the smeaty bean dip is a lot more like chili once I add enchilada sauce. And I grew up eating homemade chili over rice, so that works for me. Anyway, it’s good and a little different.
I’ve been saving some of the other meals for when/if it gets really rough and making a hot meal has to be simple or it just isn’t going to happen. Like popping lentils and artichoke hearts in the packet of vegetable soup (it’s a smooth soup, fully blended).
Funny but true, the coconut milk vermicelli soup is super easy because I boil everything but the noodles and tuna, then turn off the flame, add the noodles and tuna, and let it sit for five minutes. It kinda doesn’t count as a change of pace because of the tuna. And it’s pretty plain at this point with just soy sauce, Sriracha, and dried Thai basil for flavor. I just reread that and smiled…it sounds pretty good, even without the dashi/fish sauce/oyster sauce kind of bass note.
Sunday, November 24
What a world!
James handed over the watch with a tale of fantastic sights. I got out to the cockpit and wow…gobsmacked.
The bioluminescent critters enliven the froth of our passage and twinkle like stars in surface bursts. But deeper, fireworks!
We’re being escorted through the ocean by a shoal of tuna. When one of them strikes, there’s an illuminated explosion…and it’s constant somewhere around the boat, like the crescendo of a fireworks display.
The surface sparkling and deeper flashes are mirrored in slow motion by the light of Jupiter applauding Orion’s night-long cartwheel. And then there’s Mars, the tagalong that can’t catch up. I turn my attention from the richness of the starfield to the pelagic drama…and back…and forth…
Daylight strikes. Rain has come through a couple times and the downwind side is also in the shade, so it’s still wet. A nice strong breeze is both drying our towels and sending us along at a good clip. From this standpoint, at 1039, we’re probably going to approach but not pass 100 miles for the day.
Noon position: N 15° 22.930’ W 045° 22.792’
Distance noon to noon: 99.2 NM
Average speed: 4.14 kn
Trip distance covered: 1236.9 NM
Distance to destination: 907.6 NM
