Life on the Ocean

Hanging out in the Pacific Ocean - Day 5

What a great day for hanging out in the ocean.
It got so calm today that we ended up sitting for an hour and scrubbing the bottom. The Galapagos are very sensitive about the bottom growth on your boat bottom, and if it isn't nicely clean they send you out 60 miles with one of their expensive divers to clean your bottom and your wallet! :)

We have about 2 foot swells with about a 20 second interval coming out of the south, and some 6 to 8 inch wind waves. So as you can imagine we have been in anchorages with much more wave action.

So Integrity comes up to me and tells me that Innocence hurt his "Bluie" (He is too masculine to call it a Pinky). It took me a little while to figure out what a Bluie was. The only question I had when I stopped laughing was how to spell
Bluie.

So last night was perfect, pretty much a steady wind and calm seas.  We did catch two giant fish last night, and we lost two real nice lures in the same two big fish. I am thinking they must have been yellow tails because of all the Dolphins playing around. The children are sure that I caught the Dolphins.

Looks like we have the makings for a squall ahead, hopefully we can ride its winds for a while.

Courage

Ocean Life

Weather here is nice, almost too nice -- sunny with light wind.  Could use a little more wind to keep moving along.  Very calm seas, which are more comfortable and pleasant, but we would like to keep moving, and don't mind a little rain to get things washed as we go.  We are sailing very tight to the wind, 30-45 degrees off our nose.  We are going straight toward the Galapagos, which is great, but doesn't set us up if the winds do come straight off the Galapagos as they are predicted in a couple of days.  Every weather file we pull though looks pretty calm, as it looks outside.

But we are still doing great with fresh food - watermelon, apples, and peaches today.  Had our Sunday morning pancakes!!  Still with 5 pineapples, one is rotting.  Need to eat them up.  I got 10 because they were $0.50 each for good-sized ones.  How can you go wrong??  Then he threw in a bonus one.  Other snacks we have found great are Jello which I made today for dessert.  It packs small and you just add water then there's enough for the whole family.  And popcorn works too, which Cassidy is making now.  Again, just small dried seeds, pops up big so there's plenty for everyone.  And we got some butter salt seasoning which makes it delicious!!  Cassidy also made some homemade bread today.  She's our official bread maker at this point.  It's really good with quinoa and flax seeds in it!!

We made water today since we were going to have to back flush the water maker anyway.  While the generator was running I was able to do a load of laundry.  Fortunately, I waited until today to do it.  Vitality vomited in both her bed and ours.  Then pooped on the floor including a towel.  So I was able to fill the load and get some necessary things washed.  It's hanging on the lines drying and I'll get the beds remade before bedtime today.

No fish yet today, but we are trolling.  Kids went for a swim earlier today behind the boat, dragging on ropes.  They love it.  Then we did freshwater (in a jug) and soap showers on the back swim step before coming up, so everyone's fresh!

That is about it for now.  We're watching "How It's Made" for quiet time.  It's interesting and they can learn something from it.  Now learning about flies for fly-fishing.  Integrity is on top of it!  Valiant is napping or he'd be quite interested too.

While Courage and Valiant were napping, we began to tack.  I tried to turn to prevent it, but instead, we went for it.  So Courage got up and started the motor to correct us.  In the meanwhile, we caught all 3 fishing lures in one rudder.  So we pulled in the Genoa and dove for the lures.  Courage cleaned the bottom also while we were out there.  Innocence and I swam along with him since it was so nice out.  He recovered all 3 lures and we are hoping that our boat bottom is clean enough to pass inspection at the Galapagos.  Time will tell.  Now we have found a little wind and are pushing on.

I'm going to look wherever I can for a mouse to plug in!!  This keyboard is a nuisance!!!

Off to make dinner and finish cleaning the bathrooms . . . Oh the luxury of cruising life!

Shannon