Had we posted a blog two days ago the title could have been: Bird. And the entry would have read: We saw a bird. Sometimes nothing happens and life at sea - to the casual observer - would seem boring. But in light of our earlier startup challenges we kind of enjoyed an uneventfull day: reading further through the on board library (Thomas couldn't help himself and read 'The sinking of whaleship Essex: about about 20 men that sail 4500 miles in the southern Passific in open boats after their ship had been sunk by a sperm whale, with them ending up drawing straws to see who would be the next victim to be cannibalised for dinner), listening to Beth Hart's 'ordi sexy' voice and blues, cooking Mexican chili con carne, or chatting & sweating away in the opressive heat. Yesterday morning, Dec. 7, the sun rose over an oily smooth and windless sea. Long forgotten was the night that Fritzes life vest self inflated when a big, very big splash of seawater showered him behind the helm (and showered Edo through the open cockpit locker hatch when he was busy repairing the generator). Long forgotten also were the many nights in which, due to the irratic and unpredictable movements of Lady Ann, our
Pixie coffeemachine would lay in ambush on the counter top, ready to jump when someone happened to pass by, to shower that person with Nespresso capsules and machine parts.
This morning, we soon decided, would be the one we would remember as the one on which we swam in the middle of the big blue ocean. Sharks or no sharks, 3500 m deep, nearest shore about a 1000 miles away: Ingo,
Davide, Frank, Fritze, Thomas and Maria took the plunge and splashed happily about (within the safe range of max. 10 meters from the boat) while Edo and Ronald remained on board, just in case. (The main sail was still up and we all know what happened to those fools that all jumped in only to see their yacht drift out of reach on an sudden puff of wind.) The remainder of the day we motored across the flat sea, with only the swell to cause some shipsmovement, pondering whether the idea to head straight into this windless zone was a tactical masterstroke of Edo's superior analytical mind, or a sad case of misjudgement on his part. With the autopilot taking over for the first time since our departure, everyone felt like this was some kind of mid term break, or rather mid ocean holiday. After having put up the bimini and while busy repairing the radar some unidentified object dropped into the sea right next to Lady Ann. Was it something from the mast or was it just a nosy little
squid jumping out (and falling back in) to admire Lady Ann's elegant lines? Frank in the mean time channelled his abundant energy into something usefull for a change: he reorganised Lady Ann's on board computer settings and actually managed to get Outlook going again. The downside was that it took us another hour to reboost the GPS and get its FIX plotted into MaxSea. Having switched on the tricolor masthead light for the night, and looking up to check if it worked, we discovered what must have dropped from the mast.
Today we had wind again, not a lot and from the East North East. After many days of hinting, pleading, begging and even blackmailing (mainly by Fritze but with the warm support of Maria) it was finally time to get our Gennaker out: all 280 m2 of it. Preparing all the lines and blocks took at least one hour, getting the sail ready to be hoisted another half hour, explaining the process of hoisting and operating the sail took a further hour. The hoisting itself (or rather both hoistings) took Davide and Ingo 10 really sweaty minutes (for the hoisting had to be
done manually) and the actual sailing with the 'Red Devil' probably took just under one hour. The slamming, the filling, the dropping, the noise, the whole boat became one restless machine with perhaps just 1 knot of increase in speed. So 'seen it, done it', down came the sail. Including the packing away of all the lines and blocks, the best part of the day was spent in fruitless exercise. Fruitless was also our catch of the day: a 1,3 meter swordfish, hooked and slowly brought in alongside by Fritze (so we should have known something was about to go wrong). We all had a good look at the beautifull fish, long enough to question ourselves how the bloody hell Ingo would tackle this one, before the line snapped. Happy hour passed in a stream of loud accusations with everyone blaming the other for the loss of a fantastic Kodak moment and for the loss of a great swordfish stake for dinner. Lucky we are not in Essex mode (yet): no straws would have been drawn though, it would have been Fritze for dinner!
December 8, 2012