Another Busy Day at Sea

Today was a nice day.  It started with a squall and I was able to use the fresh water to scrub the decks.  The cockpit cover was covered in dirt, so I cleaned it and we collected about 30 gallons of water, some of which I used to fill the washing machine.  I also got a bunch of dirt cleaned off half of the hatches.  I'll do the other half tomorrow.  It's nice to be getting the Panama soot off of the boat.  They burn everything there and ashes and dirt land all over the boats.  You just get a layer of soot after being there for any length of time.

After all that cleaning, I got to use some of the water for a freshwater shower also.  The rain lasted about an hour.  Our new cockpit cover leaks.  It still needs some caulking and finishing touches, and so the whole cockpit was wet.  We have the materials, so hopefully this will inspire us to get it done.  We haven't had rain in a long time, so it hasn't been much of an issue.  The surrounding canvas was great and with windows we can look out.

The seas are calmer, so less nauseating.  This was good for getting more done.  We had dolphins jumping on the bow this afternoon along with a little tiny baby one.  There were also some flying fish.  We caught a couple of fish, both got away with the lures.  Starting to think it would be cheaper to just buy the fish.  Although, it would not have lasted this long in our fridge.  For dinner we ate the first of the jars of meat I canned.  It seemed to be good.  Nice to get meat a few times a month out here also.

We are following gentle winds, so have a winding path. We’ve had only a couple of squalls; otherwise not that much weather.  Rumor is that the winds will be coming from the Galapagos in a few days, making it an upwind run.  We are hoping to get east of it, so it's not straight upwind which is less pleasant.  We shall see.

I started my Ecuador flag today, cut the material and have the white soaking in yellow food coloring.  It seems to be colorfast!!  Hmmmm, may need a plan B.  We'll see.  I'll leave it overnight, and then check again.  No harm in that unless a kid spills the yellow and everything except the flag gets stained. . .

Saw another boat today.  A fishing boat from Costa Rica came up behind, along side, and then ahead of us.  Apparently dropping lots of lines and buoys that we found later as our course drifted toward them.  They were circling a flag in front of us when we caught up to them.  We could see other buoys and a flag in the distance, but they didn't seem concerned.  Usually they would wave us in one direction or another.  So we sailed right over their lines, which were probably 15-20 feet down.  They waved and took a picture of us.

The kids had a nice swim this afternoon when there wasn't much wind.  Very refreshing.  And we're eating like kings since we have to eat our fresh food before we get to the Galapagos or they may choose to take it. We had fresh squeezed OJ, cantaloupe, pineapple and grapes today for snack.  Integrity started a funny thing.  He told Courage that he hurt his "bluey".  Courage of course didn't understand, so asked "what?"  Integrity held up his pinky finger and said his "bluey" was hurt.  Courage said, "that's your . . ., ooooh, OK, I get it."  He's a boy; he doesn't have a pinky it turns out.

We aren't using as much fresh water as in the past.  We filled up at Balboa Yacht Club before we left and still have plenty.  We were going to make some today, since it's been 9 days, but didn't need to.  We need to back flush our filter on our water maker every 10 days or pickle it, so we plan to make water every 10 days or so.  With the new freshwater from the rain today, we are flush.

We are towing a propeller attached to a generator.  It spins and creates power for us while we sail.  Plus the solar and wind, we are doing well there too.  Except this afternoon I noticed our solar panels were in the shade of the Mainsail, so not ideal production.  But we haven't had to turn off lights or fans or anything to ration power.  Would like to run the fridge a bit more, but other than that, it's working great too.  Will probably wash that load of laundry next time we run the motor or if we run the generator to make water.  So it's loaded and filled with water, but not going to run it yet.

Going to go get everyone to bed.  Please check this letter for spelling/mistakes.  I'm about to throw this computer overboard!  SailMail has to be run on a PC, so it totally slows down my Mac to run parallel systems.  So we have a PC laptop here specifically for SailMail, which is GREAT!!  But, in writing this, it's carried me all over the message over 20 times, literally.  I am typing, and then it jumps randomly and interjects somewhere else --- 3 times while writing that sentence.  It may be worse than the super slow Mac that freezes up from the PC software slowing it down.  Not decided which is the worse of two evils.  Both currently feel evil!

Shannon