Wednesday, November 13
A bold new sailing day, but very gentle wind. Just caught an AIS signal from Gleda, a 12m pleasure vessel. I don’t know if we’ll get close enough to see them.
I was looking back through the log and realized that we achieved 5000 nautical miles on Cetacea at some point between Key West and leaving Boot Key with our brand new electric motor. They’re not very far apart, so it’s safe to say we did 5000 miles in Cetacea with the old infernal combustion engine and have already beat that with the electric motor, about 5800 miles. Wow.
It’s now 2005, just after 8pm, and I’m tired! Broken sleep takes some getting used to, but I feel good about my chances for sleeping during my next off watch, which is the first long one. I’m also in a food coma because James made spaghetti and his scratch-from-canned-ingredients sauce. He did a rose using some of the shelf stable cream from the Azores and it was delicious. We have two bottles of leftover sauce for mixing into packets of tomato soup. Biiiig upgrade!
Looks like we’ll be doing basically the same as last night, rolling in the yankee so we can head farther downwind without listening to it flog itself to death. So far, our average is 4.2 knots, just under a 100 mile day if it keeps up. We’ll see, as always.
The sunset was beautiful and I clipped my harness to the jackline so I could go forward and get some pictures from somewhere other than the cockpit.
Then, while James was cooking, the light got good in a whole new way and I had to shoot that too.
We ate in the cockpit with the breeze cooling the cook and the post sunset light softening the severity of the sky’s encroaching darkness. The moon, full tomorrow, came in and out of view as the boat rocked the solar panels into and out of the way. A romantic and lovely meal, the first complicated one of the trip. (Though I did make savory oatmeal this morning, which calls for a pot for the oatmeal and a skillet for the eggs.)
Since I’m apparently reporting the food news today, what we had in between breakfast and dinner, during the heat of the early afternoon, was tuna salad and soft cheese on crackers with tomato and cucumber slices. Marvelous day’s eating, and I’m impressed we’re acclimating to being underway so well so quickly!
Thursday, November 14
James woke me up full of adrenaline. He’d just seen a fireball traveling west to east, lasting at least 10 seconds. He looked at the clock and it was 2345, or quarter to midnight (UTC+1). Since that’s when he would have woken me anyway, he got to share it right away.
Last time he saw a really big one was off the coast of North Carolina. I was able to find it in an online database of citizen sightings that astronomers confirm. It will be cool if I can find this one too!
0710 I slept well on both of my off watches. Dreamed a lot…feels like it must have been the whole time. I just watched the sun rise and I’m putting off the inevitable application of sunscreen. At least I’m remembering to wash after dark, so I’m not covering the pillowcase with it.
Thanks, planet! First you fuck me over, then you fix it. We were being dragged north and I was letting it happen. We’re going downwind as far as I’m comfortable. Then, right as I took over at 1000, we just…stabilized about 3 miles off our course line. Cross-track error that isn’t growing larger can be a problem for later.
Noon position: N 15° 10.329’ W 030° 06.118’
Distance noon to noon: 100.5 NM
Average speed: 4.19 kn
Trip distance covered: 320.3 NM
Distance to destination: 1792 NM
