There’s not a lot happening in the Atlantic Ocean, 500 miles from the Brazilian coast. And it’s hot. Sweat dripping down your back hot. Sweat coalescing under your hair, dampening your hairline, and dripping down your neck hot. Hot enough that everyone is cranky and uncomfortable and we just want to sit still in the shade and wait for the night’s coolness to come.
Now the night is finally here. But with the heat, or probably because of the heat, or somehow linked to the presence of the heat, there is very little wind. Le Grand Bleu finally fluttered to a halt around dinner time during Gemma’s watch. She suggested it was time to douse it and Joe agreed. Down came our only sail and up went . . . nothing. We turned on the starboard motor (Joe very kindly keeps it running so we don’t have to smell the diesel fumes that would waft over us if the port engine were running) and that was it.
Today was an “alternative plan” school day. On our three days on, one day off schedule, we would have once again had school on Sunday, our cleaning day. Last week it was miserable and I didn’t want to repeat the unpleasantness of cooking, cleaning, and running school, especially in this heat. I suggested to the kids that we have one more school day but that it would be different than normal, then they could have Sunday as just a cleaning day with no school. Cobin suggested that we just switch cleaning to Saturday because either way they would have cleaning on a day off but the girls overruled him and we had an alternative school day which consisted of playing educational games and doing various activities that I keep meaning to do, like Future Problem Solving (a program I did as a kid that I’m trying out on our kids).
With only 4 days left of the passage (fingers crossed), we are starting to move into “use it or lose it” mode with our fresh produce. There’s enough room in the refrigerator now to move things into the fridge if they’re on the cusp of spoiling or, if they have passed their prime, they get consigned to the sea. Amazingly, the cabbages that we bought in Cape Town that Gemma and I both thought would be fish food, turned out to be just fine after we stripped back the first few layers of leaves. See before and after photo for proof. Oranges also keep amazingly well, although I have moved them into the fridge because cold oranges are a nice treat on a hot day!
If the citrus doesn’t keep, we have developed an alternate way of disposing of it that is far more fun than just chucking it into the sea. I call it, “lime tennis” and we played a round today. With Le Grand Bleu acting as a sun shade for much of the day, we did at least have some relief from the direct sun and went out on the trampolines to play.
I remembered to buy extra limes when we left Cape Town so we each got to hit 3-4 limes off into the sea with tennis rackets we keep on board just for this game. Joe opted for the baseball bat but the lime exploded and juiced him in the eye so he switched back to the kinder, gentler tennis racket. Gemma took a turn and we all enjoyed sending our bedraggled fruit off into the watery compost heap.
Update on the battle fronts:
Spinnaker snuffer (greased pig rope):
Raising the spinnaker – no problem. Victory is mine every time!
Dropping the spinnaker – The battle goes on. Joe and Cobin wrestled it to a stopping place and it was my turn to go bouncing to help. I had my gloves on, ready for action. The gloves were useless. I might as well have slathered my hands in bacon fat. There goes my conspiracy theory about the gloves and the snuffer designers.
Moths
Although this battle has been raging for some time, it rarely gets much press. There are usually more interesting topics than insect invasions. Somewhere pre-Australia, we got a mild infestation of kitchen moths. They are tiny and more or less harmless (apart from the annoying smudge they leave when I squash them). They are easy to kill but, before they become moths, they infiltrate all kinds of foodstuffs in the form of rice-grain sized maggots, leaving webbing and insect detritus behind. I know their size because once when I was pre-cooking my rice (I like to sizzle it around in some oil before I add the water), I saw some of the grains squiggling around in the hot pot.
Tully enjoys playing with them before we toss them into the sea. She had a good time picking out the grains of rice with black heads. She also likes cleaning our shoes with tweezers after we go for a hike through rocky soil. She was in seventh heaven the time we did a hike on a Puerto Rican island covered with cactus that impaled all of our shoes. I admit I might have joined her with the tweezers on that one. Strangely satisfying!
But back to the battle. I thought I had finally eliminated all their sources of food. I had bought all new spices, thrown out polenta, lentils and beans and replaced all my flour and nuts. I constantly scoured popular food locations for signs of webbing and didn’t see any.
The whole time we were in Cape Town we were moth free so I was sure we had won. Then, the other day I found a maggot in an unopened bag of flour. An aberration, I told myself. Just a weird fluke. Then a moth fluttered out of the dry goods storage under the floor. And today, while making a new recipe that called for sesame seeds, Gemma and I found a hotbed of webbing and maggots in the sesame seeds. We managed to salvage a tablespoon of them and figured it would be fine if they were toasted. We’re renaming it “Cucumber salad surprise” and will see if anyone notices the extra flavoring tomorrow. The battle continues.
Keeping hot sweaty girls out of my bed
I’m about 2-2 on this one. Right now, there is one girl in my bed who said her tooth hurt and she was hot and couldn’t sleep. She got up several times to complain about various things and I finally sent her into my room where she instantly fell asleep. I managed to convince the other one that her “headache” would go away if she laid down in her own bed. At least the one in my bed now is the one that doesn’t kick.
Ice cream
This is really Cobin’s battle but we’re all players. He got an ice cream maker for his birthday but is usually unable to use it because the freezer is packed with more important things and doesn’t have room to freeze the container for the ice cream maker. But we finally cleared space and he made the custard to put in it. He froze the container overnight but the custard wouldn’t thicken in the machine. He kept telling me it had something to do with our custard mixing and a skin on the custard, etc. but I told him that it just wasn’t cold. He conceded the point and we tried chilling it again. And again. And again. Same problem. I think we just aren’t generating enough power to freeze it. The things in the freezer are staying cold but we just don’t have the energy required to freeze the ice cream canister. I think this battle is lost. We’ve cut our losses and put the custard directly in the freezer. At least we’ll have something cold and sweet, even if it isn’t exactly ice cream.
The wind, such as it is, is back. I woke Joe and we hoisted the spinnaker with no issues. Le Grand Bleu is back in action and I will head off to bed, leaving Gemma and Joe to guide our ship through the calm seas until morning.
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