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Tara - Day 4 -- May 13th



Day 4 -- May 13th 9:30am -- Well, it appears that we are too close to the Bermuda Triangle , if we are not in it already. The night was squally and full of lightening from most directions but we escaped any serious rains or near strikes. As the we entered the night we reefed in the Main Sail because it takes longer and is a bit more complicated to do but we left the Jib out full with each watch leader on a hair-trigger to call for help at the first sign of a squall bringing on increased winds. (For those of you not familiar with squalls: Winds can pipe up from 10 knots to 25 knots in less than a minute or two.) That call came at 1:00am as Christopher was finishing his watch and Jack was coming on. They called me up just in time to reef in the JIB but she wouldn’t furl in. First we had a back-wrap on the winch and then she wouldn’t come in at all. As Lisa gathered my life jacket and tether (we have lines that run from bow to stern that we clip ourselves onto so that we can’t get washed overboard) I prepared to go forward. When I got there I saw that the furling line had 5 wraps completely out of the furler and they were wrapped tightly around the forestay. This should be impossible!?!? It took 45 minutes from start to finish to get the situation resolved. We have NO FREAKING IDEA how this could have happened. We have 2 engineers aboard and a two other cats that are probably smarter than both engineers and none of us can imagine any physical way this could have happened without a midnight boarding by a ghost. That’s Bermuda Triangle story #1.

Bermuda Triangle #2: The freezer mysteriously started cooling better and we are down to 31.8 degrees so the Filet Mignon party is on hold.

Bermuda Triangle #3: The refrigerator went nuts and the temp fell to 25 degrees from its normal 39 degrees. Of course a day ago this would have been great news and we would have taken the thawing meat from the failing freezer and thrown it over there. Well, if there is such thing as a non-problem, it is a refrigerator being too cold. So, we simply turned it off and let the temp rise before we had frozen milk and veggies. Both cooling units seem to be working now so we are keeping our fingers crossed.
A fish story: We put out the fishing line for the first time yesterday late afternoon. Prior to that, nobody had a) the energy to fight the way to the stern to get the tackle out at play, nor b) the desire to eat anything that we could have possibly caught. Within 2 minutes of putting out the line I saw Christopher’s jaw drop and eyes light up. Looking back from the cockpit, he saw the strike. We ran back to the stern to fight it and every now and then would see the clear yellow and green coloring of a nice Mahi-mahi. We were sailing at 9 knots at the time and Christopher had a hell of a time fighting her all the way to the back of the boat for about 15 minutes. And then I failed to gaff her properly and we lost her 6 inches from the stern. Argggg!

Nice, calm sailing today as the winds have fallen to 12 knots. Spirits are good and we are all starting to remember why we do this.



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