Well, we are definitely over halfway and seem to have figured it out. Last 24 hours running downwind with the spinnaker and surfing the waves rather than broadside the waves has been very pleasant! Today was not as eventful as yesterday, but nice none-the-less.
On the net this morning, it appears to me that while we are not in the lead, we are in the running. The boats that went north lost ground for sure. But, I believe their strategy is that now they can sail their rhumb (rum) line faster due to their angle to the wind. We shall see. We got information from the kid boat, Daphne, who doesn't have a ham radio, but uses satellite email to keep other boats up to date. Yesterday they were basically where we were this morning!! They are a small catamaran and we thought they'd be behind us. Wow, and good for them!! Our net controller, who is single-handing, was out changing sails this morning, so there was a little concern on his wellbeing until he checked in later. Apparently last night the winds were light and the people actually took down sails and were bobbing around out there. We kept moving steadily with our spinnaker downwind run, so we did well compared to the crowd last night. We also learned that our friends on Field Trip are running a parasail - a huge light wind sail up front. Interesting to hear what gear everyone has and is using for what conditions. They caught 2 tuna! First successes of the trip after our 30# tuna on day 1. So many lures have gone in that boats are now fishing with homemade lures so as not to lose any more expensive commercial ones.
We saw a couple more birds out here today. And there is a lot of playing on the bow.
The kids made rope swings up front and are swinging from the rafters. They also have found space bags with all their spare clothes on the bottom of their clothes storage boxes. I put the long sleeves, pants, and warmer clothes away so that it wouldn't mold and I don't have to wash it all or pick it all up every time. Well, they were so excited about these old familiar clothes that they had to pull them off of the bottom of their storage boxes and take everything out of them. They have been wearing their robes, long sleeve shirts and long pants now. Fortunately it's comfortable here, not sweaty hot, so they can get away with it. On the downside, their clothes storage has become a huge mess in their room and the living room. I try not to take on big tasks while we are underway, like cleaning up ALL of all of the kid's clothing. So, there's some work to be done! I'll put it on my list.
We made great power with our solar today since we don't have the main up which has been shading the panels during half of the day. I got some good work done organizing, downloading, and labeling pictures. I'm working on putting together a video of our stay in the Galapagos. Got some good work done today, Cassidy is doing the editing right now. If we get great Internet I can upload it. If not, I hope to send all of our videos home on a hard-drive with Cassidy in July when she goes to the states and see if someone out there can upload them to our blog page. We'll share them one day. But until that time, we love to re-watch our adventures as our evening wind down activity.
We did some French for gummies this evening. Does anyone know how to teach a language to kids? We're trying, they have some, but sometimes it seems like we are repeating a lot without moving forward. I don't think language is my strong subject, which doesn't help. I listened to a French study CD for an hour or two today also. Hoping it'll sink in. Nicer to communicate in the local language. You miss so much when you don't know what people are saying.
Speaking of missing things. Apparently a "rum line" as sailors refer to it is a rhumb line. Who knew? Apparently Storm did! Thanks Storm for the insight into the sailing world. Someone has to keep me up to date. I referred to my Sailing Terminology book, which indicated that a rhumb line is a sailor's version of a congo line. So having done the research, I feel up to date and well informed.
I blend, oh yeah, I blend!!
Shannon
No comments:
Post a Comment