Author: Pam
The night passed fairly peacefully and we each actually saw a boat. It almost feels strange to see boat traffic after seeing almost no boats since leaving Mexico while on a passage. My sighting was six and a half miles behind us and then turned off at an angle on our starboard side. I sat outside for nearly an hour keeping an eye on its position with the monocular.
The days have started to take on the longer passage routine. Each evening we discuss our plans for the next day and then regroup in the morning. The routine currently includes checking in on the nets at 0800, breakfast , personal reading or journal writing, a boat related project, lunch, reading out loud and playing a game of cards (Scott won again today, ugh). Today our boat related project was to finally reorganize the mass of instruction manuals we have collected over the past year. We had set up a filing system before leaving, but since leaving we had just been throwing everything in the front of the file box. It was a nice way to pass the time and we felt like we had been quite productive. While we had the label maker out I also made new labels for the running rigging to apply during Tournesol’s upcoming face lift in NZ.
The seas were still rough today breaking over the boat at regular intervals. We have had the hatch and ports closed for the entire trip, except for the opportunity to open the hatch last night. We continue to keep the companionway hatch boards off for the light, air and the convenience of going out to look around and adjust the windvane. However, this has proven on more than one occasion to be risky. I was sitting on the nav station seat when a rogue wave smashed into and over the port side of the boat and showered through the companionway onto my head. The good news was I provided a shield for the computer, the bad news I suppose is obvious.
We decided we needed a break from soup, three meals in a row is a record. We had canned baked beans and pineapple for lunch, not mixed together mind you, though that may have been an idea. This will not go down as one of my favorite lunches, but Scott had wanted to buy the canned beans. Our Ifo Bakery order had included 6 flour tortillas, which we were very excited about. The plan was to make vegetarian burritos with refried beans, cheese and salsa. It seems we had gone from a soup trend to a bean trend, I am not sure what happened to our sense of variety the past couple of days. I pulled out the tortillas that I was assured had a long shelf life to find they were each spotted with green specs, oh no! Well, we may not be up on variety, but we are flexible sailors. Plan B ended up being jasmine rice and refried beans (too late they were already in the pan) with cheese and salsa on top. We both ended up enjoying it almost as much as we would have the longed for burritos.
We discovered today when we checked our e-mail that none of the position reports we have sent so far on this passage to Yotreps have been posted due to a technical error. Unfortunately, we won’t have a current posting until tomorrow October 30th, four and a half days into our trip.
Today was sunny and a great power day. We thought we would have to run the engine to give the batteries a drink, but the sun came through. The day passed quickly and we are thrilled to be making good progress toward Whangarei, at 1600 today we had 887 miles to go.
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