oh, the fecundity.

20°13'N
38° W
0630 GMT
24.2.08
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some more weather. we blew the spinnaker today. apparently it's been repaired before, so there is the thought that it might not be worth fixing. experimentally we tried flying it backward, as it is an assymmetrical sail and we were using to mostly run rather than reach. that seemed to work well. trimmed up nicely, and gave some good output. alas, we hardly knew ye.

around sunset there was a wind shift or something. read some after dinner and as there was still plenty of daylight, i thought i'd play guitar for a while on the bimini. a nice evening really, if a little windy and even heading into a spot of rain.

and does she ever whisper in his ear
all her favourite fruit
and all the most exotic places they are cultivated?

this evening, dusted off a few from camper van beethoven's back catalogue, always a treat. i really like the fruit song and when i sang (rare) once this summer was asked: 'fecundity? really?' yep. i like that word. i think the fruit song is on their myspace.

a bizarre twist: in the first part of the evening, jenny and sarah watch an eposide or three of 'heroes.' i avoid television programs for some reason (character flaw) and have been reading, playing music, studying a bit in the celestial nav instruction manual*, stuff like that. then, when sarah's watch begins, marilyn and matthew watch an episode or three of 'heroes.' note that i miss out two times on this thing i feel i am not missing but narrowly escaping. somehow the idea of travelling to the middle of the atlantic ocean is incongruent with obsessing about a television program, especially one i intentionally avoided last winter in a shimilar fashion.

we did watch a few movies on the first leg of the trip, and i'd likely still be into that. but somehow when a TV programme is thrown in there i think i should mop the floor or read le morte d'arthur, which i brought and have been neglecting. come to think of it, i brought it precicely because i have been neglecting it. i think last fall or perhaps two falls ago, i decided that i'd read it on saturday afternoons at bar italian with a caffe e latte, from 2 'til 4:30 PM. and then i did that for, like, maybe three weeks. i have picked it up from time to time, but the methodical look at this tome has never truly materialized.

oh yes, the spinnaker. around dusk it was decided that we should put the gennaker away, and flop the spin sail to portside. a good little sail change. i like sail changes. being
that i'm here to sail and learn more about sailing, i feel like being more available for that and less available for television works out just about right.


looks like the spin sail lasted a while into sarah's watch and then just gave up. shredded. reportedly it was not an expensive sail (the pink one we tested near montpellier was thousands of euros... we're not to use it as it's being saved for a race), and so was the crap sail, considered expendable.
fffffffffffffffffffffffft.

making bread. hopefully it works. this is the first 'real' bread experiment. pita bread (!), and the pizza dough was great, though a slightly thin crust is more easily forgiven than a slightly thin baguette. also on the bread front, i made baking powder biscuits to go with a soup today. not half bad. a little extra flat though.

*only a bit