'when are you coming home?' not sure, just not just yet. nothing persuasive seems to be calling at me to get back there. when it's time, i'll know.
yep.
pretty nice here. enjoyed the I of W festival. the police, iggy pop spitting on the lens of the tv camera. zutons and kaiser chiefs, newton faulkner and amy macdonald. kate moss. camping with the rugby boys. australian pink floyd show. bjorn again ~ the abba tribute band.
'when are you coming home?' not sure, just not just yet. nothing persuasive seems to be calling at me to get back there. when it's time, i'll know.
'when are you coming home?' not sure, just not just yet. nothing persuasive seems to be calling at me to get back there. when it's time, i'll know.
le toy camera est mort.
at sea
50 04 00 N
04 01 15 W
0630 UTC
06.10.08
s/y flying cloud
______________________
sunrise in the english channel. le toy camera est mort; unless it's just sleeping. i opened it up to change the battery and sea water came out. made a funny noise. when did it get wet?
a beautiful, blue day. we are likely to arrive before the pubs close in cowes. the weekend brings departure of flying cloud and for me, the isle of wight music festival. i apparently have a camping ticket et cetera. should be interesting, as i have not attended a festival (as a participant at least) for some time. i think since my embargo of the winnipeg folk fest started some 8 years ago.
cleaning, scrubbing imminent.
the bread experiment finally worked. tom wanted to make bread so we actually did up 2 loaves, and consequently there's more freshly baked bread than we'll be able to eat before we arrive. soon there'll be a bakery. irony at work. these ones are not a brick at all. not even a little bit. the secret: proofing in the oven with a pan of exceedingly hot water underneath on the bottom shelf. oh yes, actually waiting and waiting for the dough to double in size. and actually kneading the stuff for actually fifteen actual minutes.
next.
50 04 00 N
04 01 15 W
0630 UTC
06.10.08
s/y flying cloud
______________________
sunrise in the english channel. le toy camera est mort; unless it's just sleeping. i opened it up to change the battery and sea water came out. made a funny noise. when did it get wet?
a beautiful, blue day. we are likely to arrive before the pubs close in cowes. the weekend brings departure of flying cloud and for me, the isle of wight music festival. i apparently have a camping ticket et cetera. should be interesting, as i have not attended a festival (as a participant at least) for some time. i think since my embargo of the winnipeg folk fest started some 8 years ago.
cleaning, scrubbing imminent.
the bread experiment finally worked. tom wanted to make bread so we actually did up 2 loaves, and consequently there's more freshly baked bread than we'll be able to eat before we arrive. soon there'll be a bakery. irony at work. these ones are not a brick at all. not even a little bit. the secret: proofing in the oven with a pan of exceedingly hot water underneath on the bottom shelf. oh yes, actually waiting and waiting for the dough to double in size. and actually kneading the stuff for actually fifteen actual minutes.
next.
what's the craic with that?
at sea
48 58 15 N
08 06 00 W
0650 UTC
06.09.08
s/y flying cloud
_____________________________________
a busy day. just finished a sizeable portion of yummy pasta shells adorned with a pesto made some time ago by midori. yum. lunch for breakfast. fortunately, pesto keeps for a dog's age and quite possibly even improves over time.
i've been reading a book i acquired from richard, mate of Elvis The Gecko - he says that it sat on his sister's shelf for three years and i must say, if it's been read at all, it's in remarkable condition. 'bloodline of the holy grail,' i think written by this modern knights templar fellow. it's rather dry, but still strangely fascinating. gardiner claims, among other things, that Moses and Ahkenaten were the same man. perhaps wildly specualtive ~ this guy even uses erich von daniken of 'chariots of the gods' fame as a reference. this was the dude who claimed that aliens built the pyramids and stonehenge. anyhoo, it's an interesting book and i hope that i can finish it in time to get it back to richard in southhampton where elvis will be residing.
i once again surrendered my watch this afternoon to pretend i was a plumber. you know. loosen the belt, show a little cleavage. say bad words. stuff like that. never let me complain about how much a plumber costs. wait ~ complaining would mean that i'd be paying. and not doing it myself. tough call. perhaps i look forward to complaining about how much a plumber costs. matty has claimed that this is my /favourite/ job, but actually i think that it's his favourite job to not have to do since before he got on this boat. a thankless and not terribly fun job. but hey, quintessentially useful.
after washing my hands a hundred-fifty times, i think 'that wasn't so bad.' yes, it was. and should i look forward to the next time? not really. but if it gets me sailing, then fine.
after the next hundred fifty hand / arm etc washings and a change of clothes, i made chocolate banana muffin cake. more like banana bread with chocolate chip and almond. too much butter, but oh well. that's the way we like it. we have this very fine new zealand canned butter that they have all over the caribbean ~ totally great ~ and in a can. stays fresh, though should be refrigerated after opening. great for baking. i fried mushrooms in some. mmm. oyster mushrooms.
thomas has been very busy copying down recipes, which has been amusing. he so far has aksed me about everything i have baked. thing is, when i bake, as when i cook, the recipe is only retroactive. ingredients are funny in the middle of the sea and one doesn't always have what a recipe calls for. improvising is a necessary art for the transatlantic cook. he'll cook up a storm when he settles in after his travels.
tired now. woke up a little early to offer our ailing skipper a slightly early watch relief. to my surprise, he's taken it two days running. extra rest is good and the trouble with his position is that he's on call in addition to being responsible for his watch times. night, night. as i tend to say. except it's day day. or maybe morning morning.
48 58 15 N
08 06 00 W
0650 UTC
06.09.08
s/y flying cloud
_____________________________________
a busy day. just finished a sizeable portion of yummy pasta shells adorned with a pesto made some time ago by midori. yum. lunch for breakfast. fortunately, pesto keeps for a dog's age and quite possibly even improves over time.
i've been reading a book i acquired from richard, mate of Elvis The Gecko - he says that it sat on his sister's shelf for three years and i must say, if it's been read at all, it's in remarkable condition. 'bloodline of the holy grail,' i think written by this modern knights templar fellow. it's rather dry, but still strangely fascinating. gardiner claims, among other things, that Moses and Ahkenaten were the same man. perhaps wildly specualtive ~ this guy even uses erich von daniken of 'chariots of the gods' fame as a reference. this was the dude who claimed that aliens built the pyramids and stonehenge. anyhoo, it's an interesting book and i hope that i can finish it in time to get it back to richard in southhampton where elvis will be residing.
i once again surrendered my watch this afternoon to pretend i was a plumber. you know. loosen the belt, show a little cleavage. say bad words. stuff like that. never let me complain about how much a plumber costs. wait ~ complaining would mean that i'd be paying. and not doing it myself. tough call. perhaps i look forward to complaining about how much a plumber costs. matty has claimed that this is my /favourite/ job, but actually i think that it's his favourite job to not have to do since before he got on this boat. a thankless and not terribly fun job. but hey, quintessentially useful.
after washing my hands a hundred-fifty times, i think 'that wasn't so bad.' yes, it was. and should i look forward to the next time? not really. but if it gets me sailing, then fine.
after the next hundred fifty hand / arm etc washings and a change of clothes, i made chocolate banana muffin cake. more like banana bread with chocolate chip and almond. too much butter, but oh well. that's the way we like it. we have this very fine new zealand canned butter that they have all over the caribbean ~ totally great ~ and in a can. stays fresh, though should be refrigerated after opening. great for baking. i fried mushrooms in some. mmm. oyster mushrooms.
thomas has been very busy copying down recipes, which has been amusing. he so far has aksed me about everything i have baked. thing is, when i bake, as when i cook, the recipe is only retroactive. ingredients are funny in the middle of the sea and one doesn't always have what a recipe calls for. improvising is a necessary art for the transatlantic cook. he'll cook up a storm when he settles in after his travels.
tired now. woke up a little early to offer our ailing skipper a slightly early watch relief. to my surprise, he's taken it two days running. extra rest is good and the trouble with his position is that he's on call in addition to being responsible for his watch times. night, night. as i tend to say. except it's day day. or maybe morning morning.
lucky.
at sea
47 52 N
11 48 W
0700 UTC
06.08.08
s/y flying cloud
_________________________
more learning curve. instructed to 'experiment and trim the sails.' i had a lousy time trying to get the boat to the requisite 7 knots. this business of a forward travelleris entirely new to me and the part where we can set the lateral location of the main traveller is also quite new.
"This is not a dinghy." ~ words of wisdom from matt
no kidding. it's 35' longer than any boat i have ever sailed and it weighs 12 tons. i did have it at 5.5 knots, but with some fussing more than i had expected (which /did/ please me) it was 6.2 and then 6.5. of course, that'd be matt fussing. not me. i recognized that matt would be getting impatient any second and thought i'd head that off and aks for help sooner than later.
the solent traveller, though it was blown (i.e. removed completely from the winch and the line was entirely slack) was stuck. no way for me to know that it sometimes does that. easing the sheet solved that problem. (oh yes, that means loosening a rope-attached-to-a-sail).
we then lasted about a half hour until the gennaker came out. wind conditions less than ideal. i am yet convinced that the only way to learn is to make mistakes, though i am also convinced that the word 'sucks' need not be involved. in the how-to-motivate-and-educate-your-volunteer-labour-force manual, i'm not sure that it suggests adversity and discouragement as sure fire tactics. up there with micromanagement.
having said that, my experiment of not messing with the mainsail's traveller at all worked very well in hour three of my watch. we were mostly or entirely above 7 1/2 knots and though vis was very low due to this crazy fog, the radar was my friend and i even remembered how to set up the VRM / EBL to track an object ominously lurking at 130 and 8 nm. a cloud? that kind of radar worksinconveniently less well in fog / rain / big waves. kinda funny, isn't it. when you need it most. visibility was low enough that i was doing pretty near constant horizon sweeps breaking only long enough to check the VRM / EBL and my ominous lurking thing.
this afternoon on watch we had a container vessel (french speaking, so it was carrying les containers) portside at about 2 nautical miles. quite close, but only a silhouette. ghostly in the fog and barely visible. when i tried calling it on the radio matthew aksed me if i had been in the rum; i invited him to stand exactly where i was standing. when he did, he immediately got on the VHF and started repeatedly calling the ship.
wild. the container ship or tanker midori and i saw that morning was waaay closer. but this time there was fog, so it was indeed best to be safe.
a random list of things that are 'bad luck'
umbrellas
painting a boat green
ra-naming a vessel
whistling
touching wood ~ this one is a funny one as plenty of folks to this on land. the boaty explanation is that on land when you touch wood, the bad luck goes into the ground through the wood, and on a boat the bad luck has nowhere to go. so it's kind of like on shore there is this electrical ground where the bad luck escapes to. Hope McLaren in Carriacou told me that you can get rid of the bad luck on a vessel by pouring a bottle of rum on its deck. Also in Carriacou, they sacrifice a goat on the foredeck as a new boat is being launched; blood must be spilled on the deck to appease the jumbies (spirits). also they cook the goat and feed everyone who is helping to get the boat in the sea. and give them rum.
suggesting aloud that something is working particularly well.
anything green
bananas
well... women. having said that, it's just a piece of folklore (an old wives's tale?) and right now jenny is whistling and though not eating a banana, she did say her favourite coolkies were choco chip banana.
.
47 52 N
11 48 W
0700 UTC
06.08.08
s/y flying cloud
_________________________
more learning curve. instructed to 'experiment and trim the sails.' i had a lousy time trying to get the boat to the requisite 7 knots. this business of a forward travelleris entirely new to me and the part where we can set the lateral location of the main traveller is also quite new.
"This is not a dinghy." ~ words of wisdom from matt
no kidding. it's 35' longer than any boat i have ever sailed and it weighs 12 tons. i did have it at 5.5 knots, but with some fussing more than i had expected (which /did/ please me) it was 6.2 and then 6.5. of course, that'd be matt fussing. not me. i recognized that matt would be getting impatient any second and thought i'd head that off and aks for help sooner than later.
the solent traveller, though it was blown (i.e. removed completely from the winch and the line was entirely slack) was stuck. no way for me to know that it sometimes does that. easing the sheet solved that problem. (oh yes, that means loosening a rope-attached-to-a-sail).
we then lasted about a half hour until the gennaker came out. wind conditions less than ideal. i am yet convinced that the only way to learn is to make mistakes, though i am also convinced that the word 'sucks' need not be involved. in the how-to-motivate-and-educate-your-volunteer-labour-force manual, i'm not sure that it suggests adversity and discouragement as sure fire tactics. up there with micromanagement.
having said that, my experiment of not messing with the mainsail's traveller at all worked very well in hour three of my watch. we were mostly or entirely above 7 1/2 knots and though vis was very low due to this crazy fog, the radar was my friend and i even remembered how to set up the VRM / EBL to track an object ominously lurking at 130 and 8 nm. a cloud? that kind of radar worksinconveniently less well in fog / rain / big waves. kinda funny, isn't it. when you need it most. visibility was low enough that i was doing pretty near constant horizon sweeps breaking only long enough to check the VRM / EBL and my ominous lurking thing.
this afternoon on watch we had a container vessel (french speaking, so it was carrying les containers) portside at about 2 nautical miles. quite close, but only a silhouette. ghostly in the fog and barely visible. when i tried calling it on the radio matthew aksed me if i had been in the rum; i invited him to stand exactly where i was standing. when he did, he immediately got on the VHF and started repeatedly calling the ship.
wild. the container ship or tanker midori and i saw that morning was waaay closer. but this time there was fog, so it was indeed best to be safe.
a random list of things that are 'bad luck'
.
the big, pedantic fish insists it's a mammal.
at sea
46 41 00 N
15 41 00 W
0630 GMT
06.07.08
S/Y Flying Cloud
____________________
mmph. another grey morning. fitting for the myth of English Weather - though the sunrise would be a nice perk, given that i'm already awake anyway. motorsailing. my watch relief slept in again and she's grumpy i let her sleep in the extra 8 minutes. really, i was going to wake her at 0615. but i was putting it off, as soon i leave the boat and i do relish watch. so, being selfish, i wanted to slightly prolong it. Also, i find waking anyone quite distasteful, so there's even less initiative to go and do it at 601 AM.
this leg is total race mode. actually more than the other deliveries. anything less than 7 knots, and we're to wake the skipper; most often this means that we'll motorsail though occasionally we'll perform a course adjustment or perhaps a sail change. but the plan is to rocketship right to Cowes on the Isle of Wight and then for Flying Cloud to depart for Sweden forthwith immediately. Matthew has a wedding he wants to attend in Poland.
This leg has less crew, so Matt's keeping a watch as well as doing the rest of ship captaining duties. not so much of a deal perhaps, though the return crossing seems less of a milk run than from canaries - antigiua. rougher seas generally, but it also seems less bouncy-bouncy. hard to say as i think i may be more acclimatized to the boat et cetera.
tom was up the mast yesterday and said the whale activity was most premium - he finally saw his first big fish. of course, it's a mammal and not a fish. but he's keen to see one since we left antigua. plenty of dolphins. there was a pod of about 20 of them that stormed the boat yesterday afternoon. very cool. though, they left right away as we're not terribly interesting. i gather a monohull makes a bigger bow wave and so forth so they hang out and play way more. we're just wee in comparison, though fast. we left many hours after 'minnie the moocher' an open concept racing boat, maybe an open 60'? very sexy. we did, however, pass it nearly like it was standing still yesterday evening. 2 days into the crossing. see ya later.
time for to make the manufacturing of Zs.
46 41 00 N
15 41 00 W
0630 GMT
06.07.08
S/Y Flying Cloud
____________________
mmph. another grey morning. fitting for the myth of English Weather - though the sunrise would be a nice perk, given that i'm already awake anyway. motorsailing. my watch relief slept in again and she's grumpy i let her sleep in the extra 8 minutes. really, i was going to wake her at 0615. but i was putting it off, as soon i leave the boat and i do relish watch. so, being selfish, i wanted to slightly prolong it. Also, i find waking anyone quite distasteful, so there's even less initiative to go and do it at 601 AM.
this leg is total race mode. actually more than the other deliveries. anything less than 7 knots, and we're to wake the skipper; most often this means that we'll motorsail though occasionally we'll perform a course adjustment or perhaps a sail change. but the plan is to rocketship right to Cowes on the Isle of Wight and then for Flying Cloud to depart for Sweden forthwith immediately. Matthew has a wedding he wants to attend in Poland.
This leg has less crew, so Matt's keeping a watch as well as doing the rest of ship captaining duties. not so much of a deal perhaps, though the return crossing seems less of a milk run than from canaries - antigiua. rougher seas generally, but it also seems less bouncy-bouncy. hard to say as i think i may be more acclimatized to the boat et cetera.
tom was up the mast yesterday and said the whale activity was most premium - he finally saw his first big fish. of course, it's a mammal and not a fish. but he's keen to see one since we left antigua. plenty of dolphins. there was a pod of about 20 of them that stormed the boat yesterday afternoon. very cool. though, they left right away as we're not terribly interesting. i gather a monohull makes a bigger bow wave and so forth so they hang out and play way more. we're just wee in comparison, though fast. we left many hours after 'minnie the moocher' an open concept racing boat, maybe an open 60'? very sexy. we did, however, pass it nearly like it was standing still yesterday evening. 2 days into the crossing. see ya later.
time for to make the manufacturing of Zs.
boaty stuff
at sea
45° 32" 30' N
19° 23" 45' W
0640 UTC
06.06.08
s/y flying cloud
______________________
apparently tomorrow's task, should i choose to accept, is to put in and take out about 20 reefs, if the weather stays as so. we've been motoring since 0945h yesterday to try and escape this high pressure system - at times the gennaker, our largest sail, has been out. at times away. mostly the main has been out as well, but to little effect. we need 15 knots of apparent wind to fly the gennaker and i think for the better part of my last watch we had 3 or 5.
afternoon watch was entertaining, however. today we were invited to expect a surprise inspection of quarters. the contention being that in the event of an event, it's not right to wade through a mess to find out where a leak is, where a fire is, or what have you. the aft cabins are a more complicated story but on this leg i am in my forward spot. this was marilyn's and before that rose's bunk. somehow i got negotiated out of it an into the spacious owner's cabin on the first crossing. no problem. this one is great though, and i sleep very well here. though we haven't had any heavy seas.
inspection being threatened, i deduced that there was just not that much to do; or maybe matthew is bored. or maybe (gasp) we're ahead of the chore-list. and so today i thought i'd work at continuing my education, sadly neglected from Antigua to Açores due to my little not-being-able-to-use-my-right-hand-for-much-of-anything problem. that's mostly or entirely not a problem anymore. about time!
i aksed what i was to learn next, knowing full well that reefing the main was on the short list, and Lo! reefing the main. note taking. diagram making. then a break to attempt the bread experiment.
in Antigua, a day or two after discombobulating (is that a word?) my hand, i happened upon a group of merry-makers camped out behind the transom of some classic yacht or another in english harbour. i think this was the day alex-the-keyboard-player-reportedly-descended-from-pirates told me that i should draw this symbol on my hand and that it would help it heal. he also told me i should come to his open stage and play bass.
en route, i found revelry. at the revelry i met this south african fellow who plays 'jurassic rock.' we played together some and he insisted that i take his guitar back to my boat and play it in my (all of my) spare time the following day. after breakfast, no, before breakfast, maybe instead of breakfast i sat in the shade with a coffee and played 'every little thing she does is magic' and i think 'wish you were here,' though exactly why i chose to play the latter is somewhat beyond me. and then to work. all day.
that evening we had a classic matthew bbq and the vision of francis (the jurassic south african) was suddenly realized. we played some more and entertained the troops with all the hits. 'love me do,' 'lola,' '(don't go back to) rockville' and many, many more. he gave me a bread recipe. i wrote it down. it works. i made it today. not a brick, but a loaf.
reefing the main.
went well-ish. shaking out the reef, less so. but i aksed jenny for guidance which i think was good for all of us. i needed the help and it's good to learn about the boaty stuff from more than one person. all fun. then i put out the gennaker and, taking matt's advice, 'first by hand and then one wrap, etc.' i started pulling the gen out 'by hand.' the danger in taking instructions literally or trying to universally apply information specific to one task. yes, the gennaker sheet /should/ be on a winch the /entire/ time ~ even in 4 knots apparent. it's a gigantic sail and the winch must must be in the way. learning curve.
45° 32" 30' N
19° 23" 45' W
0640 UTC
06.06.08
s/y flying cloud
______________________
apparently tomorrow's task, should i choose to accept, is to put in and take out about 20 reefs, if the weather stays as so. we've been motoring since 0945h yesterday to try and escape this high pressure system - at times the gennaker, our largest sail, has been out. at times away. mostly the main has been out as well, but to little effect. we need 15 knots of apparent wind to fly the gennaker and i think for the better part of my last watch we had 3 or 5.
afternoon watch was entertaining, however. today we were invited to expect a surprise inspection of quarters. the contention being that in the event of an event, it's not right to wade through a mess to find out where a leak is, where a fire is, or what have you. the aft cabins are a more complicated story but on this leg i am in my forward spot. this was marilyn's and before that rose's bunk. somehow i got negotiated out of it an into the spacious owner's cabin on the first crossing. no problem. this one is great though, and i sleep very well here. though we haven't had any heavy seas.
inspection being threatened, i deduced that there was just not that much to do; or maybe matthew is bored. or maybe (gasp) we're ahead of the chore-list. and so today i thought i'd work at continuing my education, sadly neglected from Antigua to Açores due to my little not-being-able-to-use-my-right-hand-for-much-of-anything problem. that's mostly or entirely not a problem anymore. about time!
i aksed what i was to learn next, knowing full well that reefing the main was on the short list, and Lo! reefing the main. note taking. diagram making. then a break to attempt the bread experiment.
in Antigua, a day or two after discombobulating (is that a word?) my hand, i happened upon a group of merry-makers camped out behind the transom of some classic yacht or another in english harbour. i think this was the day alex-the-keyboard-player-reportedly-descended-from-pirates told me that i should draw this symbol on my hand and that it would help it heal. he also told me i should come to his open stage and play bass.
en route, i found revelry. at the revelry i met this south african fellow who plays 'jurassic rock.' we played together some and he insisted that i take his guitar back to my boat and play it in my (all of my) spare time the following day. after breakfast, no, before breakfast, maybe instead of breakfast i sat in the shade with a coffee and played 'every little thing she does is magic' and i think 'wish you were here,' though exactly why i chose to play the latter is somewhat beyond me. and then to work. all day.
that evening we had a classic matthew bbq and the vision of francis (the jurassic south african) was suddenly realized. we played some more and entertained the troops with all the hits. 'love me do,' 'lola,' '(don't go back to) rockville' and many, many more. he gave me a bread recipe. i wrote it down. it works. i made it today. not a brick, but a loaf.
reefing the main.
went well-ish. shaking out the reef, less so. but i aksed jenny for guidance which i think was good for all of us. i needed the help and it's good to learn about the boaty stuff from more than one person. all fun. then i put out the gennaker and, taking matt's advice, 'first by hand and then one wrap, etc.' i started pulling the gen out 'by hand.' the danger in taking instructions literally or trying to universally apply information specific to one task. yes, the gennaker sheet /should/ be on a winch the /entire/ time ~ even in 4 knots apparent. it's a gigantic sail and the winch must must be in the way. learning curve.
happy chickens
at sea
43° 38' 45" N
22° 08' 30" W
06.05.08
0650 GMT
s/y flying cloud
_____________________________
whale spout.
jenny said it was the biggest one she'd ever seen; that's what she said. also the only one i'd ever seen so therefore true for me also. it appeared to be coming toward us ~ or across our bow at any rate. then 30 seconds of nothing, so i went beck inside to continue enjoying my delicious repast. boiled egg, fresh from açores com queijo on a rice-cake, lightly toasted. the eggs are from 'happy chickens' i think, as the sign in M.A.Y.S. said.
i think i'd been in horta for nearly a week when i decided to pop into mid-atlantic yacht services to ask if they knew who may was and where i might find her shop. oops. that's when i saw the sign, and their book exchange. the object of my quest. i got 'conan the barbarian' in trade for the Jorge Amado thing that showed up in the Skullduggery book shelf in Antigua. i think MAYS won on that one. but you know. i was in the mood for something... light and fluffy.
today was a good day for the learning curve ~ put away the gennaker with tom. strategic error. oop. we put out the solent just fine, and then went down 40° just fine, but then i didn't waitand just dove into the furling business. the solent crash gybed and matthew popped out to lend assistance / make sure everything was okay / give me hell for not waiting until the course chage was complete / give me hell for not diving back to the helm as soon as i noticed the headsail even think about moving. i was pretty un-ruffled by the whole process and had been quite concerned to not hourglass the gennaker*; on our vessel the main isn't really ever out all that far and and would not be a gigantic deal, i decided, to gybe and the solent is a self-tacker as well. matthew said as much, but having been an instructor and recognizing that a person learns mistakes as they repeat mistakes ~ the same maneuver would be quite dangerous on a different vessel (except we're not on a different vessel) ~ especially on a monohull. the gennaker is still away.
and the flavour of hell is generally a rather mild one - i get more grief about coffee grounds that appeared on the last passage (and miraculously hid until reappearing while on charter) than that. all in, a good exercise to put the gen away and i look forward to doing it (or perhaps anything else this week) right for once.
43° 38' 45" N
22° 08' 30" W
06.05.08
0650 GMT
s/y flying cloud
_____________________________
whale spout.
jenny said it was the biggest one she'd ever seen; that's what she said. also the only one i'd ever seen so therefore true for me also. it appeared to be coming toward us ~ or across our bow at any rate. then 30 seconds of nothing, so i went beck inside to continue enjoying my delicious repast. boiled egg, fresh from açores com queijo on a rice-cake, lightly toasted. the eggs are from 'happy chickens' i think, as the sign in M.A.Y.S. said.
i think i'd been in horta for nearly a week when i decided to pop into mid-atlantic yacht services to ask if they knew who may was and where i might find her shop. oops. that's when i saw the sign, and their book exchange. the object of my quest. i got 'conan the barbarian' in trade for the Jorge Amado thing that showed up in the Skullduggery book shelf in Antigua. i think MAYS won on that one. but you know. i was in the mood for something... light and fluffy.
today was a good day for the learning curve ~ put away the gennaker with tom. strategic error. oop. we put out the solent just fine, and then went down 40° just fine, but then i didn't waitand just dove into the furling business. the solent crash gybed and matthew popped out to lend assistance / make sure everything was okay / give me hell for not waiting until the course chage was complete / give me hell for not diving back to the helm as soon as i noticed the headsail even think about moving. i was pretty un-ruffled by the whole process and had been quite concerned to not hourglass the gennaker*; on our vessel the main isn't really ever out all that far and and would not be a gigantic deal, i decided, to gybe and the solent is a self-tacker as well. matthew said as much, but having been an instructor and recognizing that a person learns mistakes as they repeat mistakes ~ the same maneuver would be quite dangerous on a different vessel (except we're not on a different vessel) ~ especially on a monohull. the gennaker is still away.
and the flavour of hell is generally a rather mild one - i get more grief about coffee grounds that appeared on the last passage (and miraculously hid until reappearing while on charter) than that. all in, a good exercise to put the gen away and i look forward to doing it (or perhaps anything else this week) right for once.
blue
at sea
41° 15" 15' N
25° 24" 00" W
06.04.08
0620 GMT
s/y flying cloud
_____________________________
oooh. whenever i let my watch relief sleep in i feel so mean. and yet a tiny part of me feels like since i am already happily awake, what's the harm in lettingan extra 15 minutes go by? at a certain point, i suspect i'll become impatient and storm in at 601 am with the fox 40, but until that day, i'll likely tiptoe to the edge of the threshold (no wait. that's redundant, probably i'd tiptoe to the threshold) and whisper meekly. luckily, my first mate's toe was sticking out from the duvet; i managed to resist the temptation to say 'this little piggy went "WEEEE"' and merely pinched her toe. whispering 'good morning' just wasn't working.
strange to feel guilt about waking someone up, yet even more guilt for letting them sleep.
this part of the atlantic is a deeper, richer blue. still fascinating and am i ever pleased to be sailing toward the sun. of course, i'd likely be pleased to be sailing toward the sunset as well. but my little plan was to sail away from antigua. and that seems to have been successful.
today we found the wind we'd been looking for and have finally shut off the engine. thyough we'd been motorsailing which is preferable to motoring. anyway. molto molto. very more peaceful. and from the looks of the gribs we've been getting (this is fancy weather stuff we acquire by sattelite) we'll be getting mostly the same until we reach the isle of wight.
THE POLICE are playing the festival at isle of wight. which is about a day after we are scheduled to arrive. and apparently matthew already had purchased a ticket which he can no longer use as he must now rush to the l;and of 'bork,bork bork' so he can park the boat and jet off to some wedding in poland. it seems i'll get to see the police, perhaps. seems like a good plan, though i am traditionally lousy at being a festival participant; it's been nearly a ten year embargo on the winnipeg fest ~at least as an audience participant. one gets spoiled by having perfomer 'access all areas' passes and being plied with excellent food and libation. still, when in rome and all that. the concerts should be a reaaaal nice time. and i am curious about UK "camping."
cleaned the bilges this afternoon. matthew: 'should i tell you now or in 27 minutes that you're on the schedule to clean the bilges next tuesday?'
at that point i'd already removed the entire portside's floorboards, sponged out the excess wet and had filled a bucket with magic bilge soap. thomas feels that this is a pointless exercise, but i have been thinkin' that if one lives in a boat (ona boat) and /doesn't/ clean the bilges constantly and obsessively that 'new boat smell' might disappear. makes me think of sam de champlain (not the famous one, the other one)
'did you 'ear 'dat? neither did i.'
41° 15" 15' N
25° 24" 00" W
06.04.08
0620 GMT
s/y flying cloud
_____________________________
oooh. whenever i let my watch relief sleep in i feel so mean. and yet a tiny part of me feels like since i am already happily awake, what's the harm in lettingan extra 15 minutes go by? at a certain point, i suspect i'll become impatient and storm in at 601 am with the fox 40, but until that day, i'll likely tiptoe to the edge of the threshold (no wait. that's redundant, probably i'd tiptoe to the threshold) and whisper meekly. luckily, my first mate's toe was sticking out from the duvet; i managed to resist the temptation to say 'this little piggy went "WEEEE"' and merely pinched her toe. whispering 'good morning' just wasn't working.
strange to feel guilt about waking someone up, yet even more guilt for letting them sleep.
this part of the atlantic is a deeper, richer blue. still fascinating and am i ever pleased to be sailing toward the sun. of course, i'd likely be pleased to be sailing toward the sunset as well. but my little plan was to sail away from antigua. and that seems to have been successful.
today we found the wind we'd been looking for and have finally shut off the engine. thyough we'd been motorsailing which is preferable to motoring. anyway. molto molto. very more peaceful. and from the looks of the gribs we've been getting (this is fancy weather stuff we acquire by sattelite) we'll be getting mostly the same until we reach the isle of wight.
THE POLICE are playing the festival at isle of wight. which is about a day after we are scheduled to arrive. and apparently matthew already had purchased a ticket which he can no longer use as he must now rush to the l;and of 'bork,bork bork' so he can park the boat and jet off to some wedding in poland. it seems i'll get to see the police, perhaps. seems like a good plan, though i am traditionally lousy at being a festival participant; it's been nearly a ten year embargo on the winnipeg fest ~at least as an audience participant. one gets spoiled by having perfomer 'access all areas' passes and being plied with excellent food and libation. still, when in rome and all that. the concerts should be a reaaaal nice time. and i am curious about UK "camping."
cleaned the bilges this afternoon. matthew: 'should i tell you now or in 27 minutes that you're on the schedule to clean the bilges next tuesday?'
at that point i'd already removed the entire portside's floorboards, sponged out the excess wet and had filled a bucket with magic bilge soap. thomas feels that this is a pointless exercise, but i have been thinkin' that if one lives in a boat (ona boat) and /doesn't/ clean the bilges constantly and obsessively that 'new boat smell' might disappear. makes me think of sam de champlain (not the famous one, the other one)
'did you 'ear 'dat? neither did i.'
the same sky
at sea
39° 06' 45" N
28° 06' 00" W
06.03.08
0620 UTC
S/Y Flying Cloud
_______________________________
rats. genny jenny just found out her new headphones fail the *DIF test. and they were new. at least the ipod is still aboard.
exhausted. yet the coming sunrise has given me a strange second wind. as the first light appeared i suddenly thought of midori and my last morning watch. this time i will see the sun rise; though i stayed awake after watch for nearly a week on the last leg of the trip it was consistently overcast.
tonight's watch was not preceded with much manufacturing of Zs. this was decidedly less premium. legs are sore and perhaps tired from a /very/ long walk. ostensibly to see the caldiera, but maybe the walk was more about the walk than the caldiera. the knowledgeable deckhand from Tihama who i randomly met in the coffee place suggested that hitching up the road to the caldiera would work just great; except i am lousy at hitching, methinks. it turned out to be a lot more like watching cars go by in the wrong direction than hitching. and then, it was pretty grand anyhoo.
staying in a tent ~ the entire time i was in açores i was only on faial and mostly in horta ~ was not as super relaxing as i had planned. the camping spot wasn't an official camping spot and was inconveniently located. around a 20 minute walk from any facilities. no problem. no cooking, so i was pretty much a raw food eater. showers and laundry were also a 20 minute walk. maybe 25. olives, i think, are a perfect food. i like 'em. i even splurged and bought some faial cheese at one point. (ooo! cheese!) i probably wouldn't have done so if i knew what an euro is actually worth. i /am/ getting kind of curious. the camping version of staying in açores was rather cost effective though.
tom's 22 euro room was nice enough, and his 17 euro room was probably quite acceptable. i peeked in a 45 euro room abd though the view was magnificent, i'm told that the traffic noise is horrendous. i'd have to say in the 'we sell sleep' category 45 euro should get you a bit of soundproofing. i'd have to say that the tent by the sea was most triumphant in that regard, especially last night (actually, as i have not truly slept it's really the night before last~ yet it /see/s like last night). the swell was extra huge and extra loud. i admired it en route to my latenight snack on the hill with the stars. yeah.
this fine morning en route to collect a post coffee USB cable for to get my photos out of the toy camera, i was kidnapped and my holiday was quite suddenly at an end. since then, a hundred miles an hour in at least three directions. scrubbing, stuffing, tetris (in the sail locker, with random beverages-to-be-consumed-in-scandanavia, in the tool room), and a quick trip to café peter sport for a bite to eat before departure.
dolphins, phosphorescence, sea birds flying from ilha graciosa. we are sailing along the milky way toward cassiopoea, the special W constellation. Matthew claims that it's an upside down M. we're headed to the isle of wight, so there's that and it usually also reminds me of kelly woz who said, ' remember we are under the same sky.'
39° 06' 45" N
28° 06' 00" W
06.03.08
0620 UTC
S/Y Flying Cloud
_______________________________
rats. genny jenny just found out her new headphones fail the *DIF test. and they were new. at least the ipod is still aboard.
exhausted. yet the coming sunrise has given me a strange second wind. as the first light appeared i suddenly thought of midori and my last morning watch. this time i will see the sun rise; though i stayed awake after watch for nearly a week on the last leg of the trip it was consistently overcast.
tonight's watch was not preceded with much manufacturing of Zs. this was decidedly less premium. legs are sore and perhaps tired from a /very/ long walk. ostensibly to see the caldiera, but maybe the walk was more about the walk than the caldiera. the knowledgeable deckhand from Tihama who i randomly met in the coffee place suggested that hitching up the road to the caldiera would work just great; except i am lousy at hitching, methinks. it turned out to be a lot more like watching cars go by in the wrong direction than hitching. and then, it was pretty grand anyhoo.
staying in a tent ~ the entire time i was in açores i was only on faial and mostly in horta ~ was not as super relaxing as i had planned. the camping spot wasn't an official camping spot and was inconveniently located. around a 20 minute walk from any facilities. no problem. no cooking, so i was pretty much a raw food eater. showers and laundry were also a 20 minute walk. maybe 25. olives, i think, are a perfect food. i like 'em. i even splurged and bought some faial cheese at one point. (ooo! cheese!) i probably wouldn't have done so if i knew what an euro is actually worth. i /am/ getting kind of curious. the camping version of staying in açores was rather cost effective though.
tom's 22 euro room was nice enough, and his 17 euro room was probably quite acceptable. i peeked in a 45 euro room abd though the view was magnificent, i'm told that the traffic noise is horrendous. i'd have to say in the 'we sell sleep' category 45 euro should get you a bit of soundproofing. i'd have to say that the tent by the sea was most triumphant in that regard, especially last night (actually, as i have not truly slept it's really the night before last~ yet it /see/s like last night). the swell was extra huge and extra loud. i admired it en route to my latenight snack on the hill with the stars. yeah.
this fine morning en route to collect a post coffee USB cable for to get my photos out of the toy camera, i was kidnapped and my holiday was quite suddenly at an end. since then, a hundred miles an hour in at least three directions. scrubbing, stuffing, tetris (in the sail locker, with random beverages-to-be-consumed-in-scandanavia, in the tool room), and a quick trip to café peter sport for a bite to eat before departure.
dolphins, phosphorescence, sea birds flying from ilha graciosa. we are sailing along the milky way toward cassiopoea, the special W constellation. Matthew claims that it's an upside down M. we're headed to the isle of wight, so there's that and it usually also reminds me of kelly woz who said, ' remember we are under the same sky.'
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