Hello from nearer the Marquesas than not. We are less than 500 miles to go. Winds are lighter and predicted to do so continually over the next few days, so I am not optimistic about my 19 days. 20 days sounds most likely, 21 is possible if we really slow down. On the upside, the waves seem to be less also! And we are slow enough that we've put lures out again! Come on dinner!!
The net is now at 6 am our time. Cassidy was in charge at that time. She couldn't hear much of anything, except our single-handed mono-hull. She did not check in for us today since she could not hear the net controller. She didn't get positions for many boats either. We got an email from our friends on a catamaran that left the Galapagos on the 21st. They are only at 3 degrees south and flying with 20-25 knots of wind!! Said the seas were wild to go along with the big winds, but they are moving! Good for them. We hardly saw that kind of wind, and had to come to 7 degrees south to get to those trade winds. By the time we get to the islands in a few days, our winds are predicted to be 8 knots (so we may be able to travel at 4 knots).
Who's to say that homeschooling is boring. We have many programs going on here on Lil' Explorers. One is our fly breeding program! The Galapagos had many flies. Maybe a protected species, not sure, but we wiped them out as we left the islands. We've been enjoying not having them. Well, apparently the original group laid eggs in our first garbage bag that we had onboard. It's been wrapped up and stored on the top back swim step since it stinks. We only have 3 bags of garbage in 3 weeks, so that's pretty good for 8 people. Over the past 2 days we've noticed flies again. I've been killing them, only to have more the next morning. We went to check the garbage bag today, it's booming with life!!! We double bagged it and are working on mitigating the interior options for the flies that have escaped.
We also have had a lovely bloom of fruit flies. We could do some incredible genetic experiments if we had that ambition. We've taken our tomatoes and onions outside. Today, Innocence and I juiced 30 oranges - all we had left. Our arms were exhausted!! No scurvy for this crew!! It was delicious! We had to add some sugar to take the tang off; they were pretty tart fruits naturally. We had almost 2 jugs full of juice and drank it all! We washed the baskets they were in, launching about 30 fruit flies into the atmosphere. The swatter doesn't get them. I've taken to clapping them out of the sky and my aim is getting better. So, we are bleaching and working on removing all areas of interest for them and clapping them out of the sky when feasible.
Our French for Gummies program is alive and well. We can say, "Hello, my name is ____. I am ____ years old." Bonjour, je m'appelle _____. J'ai _____ ans. (Right Cindy?) I've started doing sentences rather than random words. It seemed they recognized the words, but not what it meant. Now that we say hello, my name is . . . They get the fact that "bonjour" is a greeting like hello. Before, I'd ask what is hello, what is bonjour, and they could say it, but the meaning was lost. We can count to ten. Today we added colors. We would ask each other for different colored bowling pins and passed them around the table to the person who asked. "Je veux deux vert, s'il vous plait" (I want two green, please). We skipped saying "bowling pin" since I have no idea how to say it and I don't see it being very useful in everyday conversation. Vitality asks 3-4 times per day to do French for Gummies. She participates, but only through repetition. Active participator in the gummies though!
Vitality can really swing on the ropes! She gets a running start from the deck, runs out in a circle, launches off the deck over the trampoline, landing back on the deck as she finishes her circle. If she looses her grip, she drops onto the trampoline. She loves it. No mischief today, at least not blatantly.
For whatever reason, we had tons of power today. Ran the fridge for hours. This evening we are watching a PBS special about Earth from Space, which talks about satellite images analyzing the ocean, arctic ice, ocean floor topography through radar images, and weather patterns. Quite interesting.
Shannon
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