39°22'00"N
009°32'30"W
1335 GMT+1
21.08.08
s/y safari
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Danger: Remember to disconnect the shore power supply before casting off.
yep. another idyllic day of motoring. note the sarcasm?
the motoring watches provide less entertainment and more time spent idle. not a problem, on the one hand. cascais is imminent. we'll arrice tonight around midnight and anchor until morning at qwhich point we shall likelt head into a berth in the marina. i am starting to think it's not the case that water is water no matter where you are sailing. and though this contract is better than the last one, i admit to some frustration with not actually setting out for more than a month for my actual or perhaps theoretical destination.
today is the last full day of camp s 2008. while i have certainly been busy and mostly fulfilled, i am certainly missing the place. i think it started in july in dorest, when i realized i'd rather have been in ontario than bridport one morning. up until then i was pretty pleased with everything. and then this delivery came up. suggesting that i would be landing in MID august in annapolis, now known in my head as 'naptown' which is a great nickname, i think. i jumped at this. and then sat on my hands for 16 days in the expensive resort town, with essentially no money, having spent it on gear for the trip, and a plane ticket to france. less fun. more drag.
i am fully ready to get going. no days off, thank you very much. days off are for when you have earned money. when you are broke, you work. and when you're not allowed to work, go someplace you can work. one can only scheme and plan the distant future for so long. so long as it remains distant.
the monocromatic visual field experiment
yesterday evening while on an otherwise uneventful becalmed motoring watch, i espied a yellow flotasm (jetsam?)... floaty thing. certainly about the size of /your/ head, perhaps slightly bigger. it was about 8:21. i watched it at first bobbling alongside and then past our boat, and turned my head to admire its passage. noting the time, 8:23, i opened the binocs to try and see how long it'd remain in view. keeping in mind, this thing was also bright yellow. we wree doing not much better than 5.5 knots SOG (Speed Over Ground). i made every effort to keep the darned thing in sight, and the sea state was moderate, on the slight side. we have waves, and we have swell. sometimes the waves are going the same direction as the swell, sometimes not. and then there is tide. but that's a whole nother story. i sighted our yellow floater thingy and marked the time ay 827. the 'notify the watch relief'alarm went at 830 and i stayed on the lookout for several more minutes. on this trip, watch relief gets a wakeup call, one of russ' conventions. i was in the midst of my little expriment so i dragged my feet. teri likes a bit more lead time than russ' normal 10 minutes. .
a lesson: do no look at the time. do not look anywhere other than at or for the floaty thingy in question. other people can look at the time. rereading the handwritten journal, i am alerted that i did look away at least two times between 8:21 and 8:33, to look at the time and to shut off the alarm. if it /really/ mattered, than that's two times i would consider i'd not want to have looked away.
so. the brightly coloured floating object in daylight in moderate / slight seas was visible for no more than 4 minutes aft of the boat, moving only at 5.5 knots. informative, no? i think one of the very last things my dad said to me when i was about to leave winnipeg was 'don't fall off the boat.' yep. apparently in iceland and norway, each family has its own design of warm wooly (fishing) sweater, sort of like the scots tartan. that way those fishing who might be separated from their boat might be more easily identified if ever eventually washed ashore or found adrift. ooo! morbid!
