Passage Notes

I'm sure it's strange to people sitting safely in a chair at home reading this, but so far (knock on wood) there's nothing about this passage that feels different from any other passage we've made. We've often been out of sight from land before (even if it's just obscured by marine layer) so we're used to not seeing anything but sky and ocean. And since John does all the navigating, I rarely look at a chart to see exactly where we are in the middle of all this blue. There really should be sea monsters or something out here to tell a person, "you're out in the middle of nowhere, you silly twit!"

In addition to forgetting to enter our position in the Google Earth link for Day 4's blog, John neglected to write in Day 5's entry that we took showers! Just like during our previous passage, John got out the salt water hose for our sea water wash down with soap on the leeward side deck, and the sun shower for a fresh water rinse off in the cockpit. John turns the boat downwind for a smoother and slower ride until we're finished. No, we don't wear harnesses when we do this, but we do spot for each other to make sure we both stay on board.

John's been cooking up some excellent meals on this passage. On our first night out we ate light snacks and sandwiches, but since then he's made a great rice pot with fresh veggies, vegetable omelets, dorado sandwiches, baked potatoes, dorado with sautéed onion and peppers, and more grilled dorado for the fridge. His goal is to only eat the fresh foods (as opposed to anything canned or frozen) before they have a chance to spoil. It makes cooking more of a challenge for him (all that slicing and dicing with things wanting to roll this way and that), but at least we have good weather for it at the moment. We'll save the Dinty Moore stew for rougher conditions!

Ziggy's finally acclimated, and conditions were calm enough, that he got a good hour of play time in this morning. He has an accumulation of toys that he likes chasing, and he had a lot of pent up energy to spazz out with. He hasn't "caught" any flying fish or squid in the past two nights but John makes up for it with dorado snacks whenever he cooks some for us.

John's been slogging through Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" and I'm almost finished with "Plundering Paradise: The Hand of Man on the Galapagos Islands" by Michael D'Orso. This is a must read for anyone who's spent time in Ecuador or the Galapagos. It's a series of portraits of the people living in the islands in 1999-2001, and it really nails Ecuadorian bureaucracy on the head. The government neglect (and abuse!) of those phenomenal islands is an absolute crime against nature and humanity. I take exception to his description of yachties as "millionaires" but other than that it's a fine book!

Linda