Charm is sailing like her name at the moment. If St. Patrick’s Day has brought us the luck of the Irish, that will continue all night.
We had more fun putting the spinnaker up and down today. The sock (thing that makes the sail easier to deploy) wasn’t working and Joe wanted the repaired part of the sail on the opposite side so we took the sail down and removed the sock and flipped the sail. Without the sock, the spinnaker is far more unwieldy. We started to put it up again but an unfortunate twist and the bowsprit conspired against us and we got another rip in the sail.
As we were sewing on another cannibalized piece from our other spinnaker as a patch, John and I decided that, like most temperamental creatures, this spinnaker just needed more attention. Now, after having been raised and lowered a half dozen times and having been fussed over and sewed on for hours, it is finally ready to perform. It may be too late to catch Nica but we haven’t given up yet.
On the opposite side of the personality spectrum is Cobin, the superstar of the day. With no extra attention, Cobin made homemade cinnamon rolls, put together a model V8 engine, played with his sisters, read to them, and put them to bed, made Mac and cheese for everyone for lunch, helped with the spinnaker, and created a flier to start a boat cleaning service when we reach the Marquesas. Oh - and somewhere in there, he scrubbed the toilets and cleaned his room. He had a great day and so did there rest of us because his cinnamon rolls were spectacular! He wanted to make a special dessert for St. Pat’s Day so spent last night scouring my cookbooks and decided on cinnamon rolls. I’m hopeful he will make them again, but not too soon. He kept telling us that each one contained 800 calories.
The girls also had a good day. They managed to convince all the adults on board to wear green paper clovers for at least part of the day. They played baby panthers for a while (I got to be the panther trainer) and we had a non-traditional game of charades. Non-traditional in that Tully and Marin just made up random sets of words (Ex: Unicorns and Princesses Know How) and gave arbitrary words and syllable counts and then did various body movements and facial expressions and got increasingly frustrated when we couldn’t figure them out. My personal favorite was when Marin did three totally unrelated words (nature, clouds, “anything”) with the same action of pointing vigorously off into the distance. It was enjoyable at some level although I’m not sure John and Sunil are anxious to play again.
I was laughing all morning about an email I received from Ulrike, on board the German boat Seaside. She and I had been corresponding about workouts on board during the passage. I told her about some of the workouts we are doing and mentioned one of the exercises called Russian deadlifts. She wrote back and said, “P.S. What are Russian deadlifts? We don’t have any Russian people on our boat - especially not dead ones :)”
Greetings to Turner and Lulu who are now watching and cheering us on! Marin and Tully rushed inside when they heard you were cheering - they thought they could see you somehow and were disappointed that it was just an e-mail.
Hi to Uncle Dick, our oldest fan. We helped him celebrate his 100th birthday in October and know he is sailing with us in spirit although we’d rather have his whole person. Tully told me that when he turns 183, he will be the same and still have that cart to help him walk. She also told me that he told her that he can’t remember what he looked like when he was a baby because it was a long time ago. She knows a lot of things about Uncle Dick!
Early birthday wishes to another fan - Kay Pieper Brown, who told me she doesn’t bleed orange, which is a relief to all of us! I hope we make landfall on your birthday which means we will be on land in time to celebrate my birthday on March 23!
If anyone wants to give me a birthday present, just write me an email at
[email protected] and describe any memory you have of Tully or Marin (obviously this only applies if you know them). As many of you may have heard, we had 8 out of 11 of our bags stolen out of our rental car in Ft. Lauderdale on our way down here. The only irreplaceable items were journals I had kept for both girls since they were born. I had just filled Cobin’s and left it at home. So, if you have any memories you’re willing to share, or even just messages of goodwill, I will put them in my new, digital version for them and they will know that people other than their mother love them enough to write an email :)
image1