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American Spirit II - Day 147; Bleach Wipe Down, Tom Neale's An Island to Oneself & Jack Reacher Says; Saturday, May 31, 2014



Seaduced passed us at 12:15 PM 1.8 miles to starboard.

I went off watch at 1:00 AM, and Joel started his 1:00 AM to 6:00 AM watch. I showered and changed my leg bandage. Ugly. In bed by 1:30 AM.

Joel put the jib out during his watch, then the wind went a little south and lightened up, so he rolled the jib back up. We were motor sailing.

Woke up at 4:50 AM after 3 hours and 20 minutes sleep. Felt good. Might not seem like a lot of sleep, but your body adjusts under the circumstances. If you have to get 8 hours of continuous sleep at a stretch, sailing across oceans is probably not for you.

One of the good things about getting up at 6:00 AM is that you get to watch a lot of sunrises. The sun rose above the clouds on the horizon at 7:03 AM. No green flash. I wonder if I'm ever going to see a sunrise not obstructed by clouds. There were 2 different layers of clouds this morning. High and flighty, and low and yucky looking. The wind was 11/12 knots and our boat speed 6.0 knots.

I woke Joel at 9:15 AM for the 9:30 AM net. After that we had breakfast. Scrambled eggs, chilled pear halves and bread with butter, jelly and peanut butter. Joel has butter and peanut butter; I have butter and jelly.

I took a nap from 10:30 AM to 12:30 PM. Our noon position was 18 degrees, 47 minutes South; 172 degrees, 6 minutes West. 108 miles to the waypoint north of the Kingdom of Tonga.

Joel took his afternoon nap from about 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM. During this time period I put some bleach and water in a spray bottle and started sanitizing the boat. Spray and wipe. The galley, head, shower, main cabin, aft cabin, cushions, cabinets, cockpit, hand rails, door knobs, walls, etc. Trying to get rid of any residual bacteria responsible for my second infection.

During the afternoon we had 2 fish strikes. However, both fish shook the lure. Probably tuna.

I'm reading a book called An Island to Oneself by Tom Neale. Tom spent 6 years on Suwarrow, the island atoll we visited before Niue. Its fascinating reading a book that describes an area and island that we've recently been to. Tom first got there in 1952, a year after I was born. One of the interesting facts in the book was that during World War II 2 New Zealand coast watchers with 3 natives lived on the atoll watching out and reporting on Japanese ship and air plane movements. I remember seeing the movie PT 109 about John F. Kennedy's war time experience. Coast watchers were portrayed in that movie with their native support team. Adds a little reality to it.

On page 37 of this book Tom Neale talks about his decision to go live on a deserted island by himself: "Perhaps I was a little overawed by the challenge I had taken on. I was 50 now. And this dream of mine had been essentially a dream of youth. Was I too old now to turn this dream into successful reality?" He ends that paragraph with ..."and then there was a possibility of falling ill..." My thoughts exactly. Joel and I started this adventure at 62. And 'falling ill' in the middle of an ocean is not a good thing to contemplate; or experience. An Island to Oneself could be An Ocean to Oneself or A Boat to Oneself. A lot of parallels in the book to our experience.

At 5:00 PM our Automatic Identification System (AIS) picked up the rally boat Lluiton on our port bow, moving at 3.1 knots. Obviously sailing and not motoring. Lluiton called us up on the VHF to chat at 5:30 PM.

At 5:34 PM I saw a few 2 foot long fish jump as high as 4 feet out of the water in front of and to the left of our boat. Obviously something big was chasing them. A few moments later we had our 3rd strike of the day on one of our two fishing lines. Like the others, unfortunately, this fish also spit out our lure.

Dinner at 6:00 PM was freeze dried Turkey Tetrazzini, baked beans with sausage, chilled pear halves and bread.

The communications net was held at 6:30 PM, with Firefly hosting the net. About 8 boats were involved.

At 6:40 PM I communicated our SSB with the radio tower in Manihi, 1,556 miles away; on frequency 8299.4. I couldn't connect with the station on Niue, only 150 miles away. Go figure. Our data, emails to and from the boat, were transmitted at speeds from 600 to 3200 bytes per minute.

I napped from 7:00 PM to 8:00 PM as Joel stood watch. At 8:00 PM I started my watch, which ended at 1:00 AM. Joel headed below and was soon fast asleep. At 8:07 PM I had a fishing buoy go by 50 feet from the starboard side of the boat, with a small strobe on it, which flashed every 10 or 20 seconds. It may have marked the end of a net and belong to the fishing boat all lit up that we saw over the horizon to our starboard. A small sliver of a moon was visible low on our starboard bow, obstructed by clouds mostly.

Our phosphorescent wake off the transom and the sides of the boat was quite large tonight. Lot of sparkling in the water. The best light show we've had for a couple of months. The luminescent wake was visible for 50 feet behind our boat.

I was reading a Jack Reacher novel on my Kindle tonight. Two items stick out. First, First Aid and Duct Tape, which Jack Reacher describes as the 'finest field dressing in the world.' I can't argue with that as I'm using duct tape to help seal my bandage. And Jack Reacher on sleep: "Sleep as much as can, because tiredness causes more foul-ups than carelessness and stupidity put together." Not sure I agree 100% with that, but being tired on a boat does lead to poor decisions making and problems that you wouldn't have when well rested. And sleeping as much as you can when there are only 2 of you on the boat is good advice.

Early in my watch, I removed the canvas insert between the dodger and bimini so I could watch the stars and see how many shooting stars I could total up. Not much. Only saw 2, at 11:20 PM and 11:32 PM.

336 Days until home.

Brian Fox



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