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Windleblo - Day Nine



"Last night I had a dream," said Coach upon waking in his Irish lilt.

"It was you and me, John, and we got into a fight against a Polish crew," he went on. "We were holding our own, but the tide was turning against us when the Slovenians arrived to help us. With their help, we ruled the day."

With that odd confession, the crew was up and running.

A bit earlier, I had the dawn watch. As the sky brightened, the first boat we had seen since the Cape Verde Islands appeared on the horizon. It was another ARC boat, Queen Frederica, a 50-foot Beneteau Cyclades. We looked her up on the ARC boat list and noted she carried a German flag. About that same time, we unfurled the gennaker to increase boat speed in the (still) light air and pulled away.

We waited until the sun rose in the sky a bit, and then Joules hailed them in Austrian-accented German on VHF Channel 16. A brief but cordial conversation ensued in German. Theirs is also an international crew, with a German, Swiss, and Austrian aboard. Some time later, we turned the engine on to charge the batteries and our boat speed increased yet again. The German boat receded further to our stern.

The VHF radio crackled once more. It was the Queen Frederica. "We are watching you on AIS," their skipper said in accented English, "and we are raising our gennaker, but we cannot keep up. How are you doing it?"

"Well, we are an American boat, after all," I replied.

"Ha, ha," came back. "But really, how are you keeping seven knots in this light wind."

"Let me give you to our German speaker," I said, "and perhaps he will share our secret."

Joules then took the microphone and confessed to our engine status. Both boats had a bit of a chuckle together.

We played with sextant around midday, attempting to time a noon sight in the bright sunshine. Working the sextant was one thing. Reducing the resulting sun angle was quite another. Celestial navigation can certainly get rusty quickly. We'll practice again tomorrow, perhaps.

As galley master, John prepared a spectacular fish taco dish with the still-fresh tuna. We must be making some headway as the sun did not go down until well after 7 p.m. on the ship's clock, which is set to UTC.



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