Life At Sea

We have the ability to send text emails at sea but the connection is pretty slow (remember dial-up?) so we can't send pictures. Here is a mostly photo recap of some of our fun times at sea.

Here is Pat steering us away from New York and towards the ocean. Were we having second thoughts? Not yet.

One last bridge to go under - the Varrazano Narrows Bridge. This is the bridge the New York marathoners run over. We had a beautiful day to motor out into the ocean. One guy in a fishing boat we passed yelled out to us that there was no wind out on the ocean. Two days later, there sure was...

We wrote about weather from the ocean. Here is what Pat and Rob look like when they download the grib files and print them out for review. This looks pretty civilized but at the moment the boat is pretty stable.

We had lots of pretty sunsets out on the ocean. Depending on where we were in a time zone, the sun would set around 7:30 and we would chat a bit in the cockpit. Then two of us would get a little sleep before night watches started. The first watch was usually 8 to midnight, the second was midnight to 3 am and the third was 3 am until someone else got up - maybe 6 or sometimes 7 am. 

Speaking of night watches - In the morning we often found small flying fish (dead) on deck. They were tiny, more like flying minnows, really. Then one night when I was on watch (Tom, here) we got smacked by a couple waves and got the salt water splash. It was a mostly nice night, although quite dark, so I was barefoot on watch. (That will be relevant in a moment...) Every half hour we do a complete radar check so when I went back behind the wheel to run the radar check I did the swing-around-the-wheel pivot and put my right foot down on the cockpit seat - right on top of, and squishing, a SQUID. I had no idea what I had stepped on, and my instant reaction was dog shit - except - no dogs around. I screamed like a girl and shook my leg and then grabbed my pocket flashlight. It was very dead at that point, and its gooey black ink was all over the teak seat. Yuck. So, I put it in a pan with some salt water so I could show Pat and Rob in the morning and washed off the teak. Here is Rob (he is so brave) holding up the squid for its photo op. We found another squid later that day on another part of the deck so we were actually boarded by two squid that night.

 

Here is Rob at the helm. I was hoping for an action shot of him getting smacked by that wave, but it didn't happen. I think this photo was taken the day after we did have second thoughts...  We don't have cup holders on the boat (heaven forbid...) but we do have our bottle rack right in front of the instrument pod. We got a bunch of single serving Crystal Light packets and can make flavored drinks that make the tank water taste a little better.

Of course, you can see more stars from the middle of the ocean that almost anywhere else. But taking a picture of the stars from a moving boat just isn't going to happen. We did try a moon shot one night with me trying to hold the camera steady and Rob urging "Take it now, take it now, take it now!!)

Here we are in the middle of a sail change. Someone gets to be the bow monkey (usually me) The bow monkey needs monkey hands to hang on and a small monkey brain to not think about why he isn't the one back in the cockpit. Rob is getting some jib sheets ready, and Pat steers a course upwind so we don't get beat to death by the sails. This is a pretty nice day, or I wouldn't be up there with a camera.

We were almost to Horta, but the ocean had just one more surprise for us. At around 2 in the morning, Rob was on watch (Rob had the bad luck watches - most of the bad stuff happened to him) and we were motoring in light wind, going the last 20 miles or so to Horta. All of a sudden, the engine stopped. Not like running out of fuel stop, like someone dropped a brick into the transmission stop. We all got up and after some detective work we figured we had run over some line or a net or something. Pat started the engine in reverse and managed to get it going again and we decided to motor more slowly through the darkness and when light came, we'd take a look underneath the boat. We had some strange vibration so we knew there was still a problem. Around 9 am Pat did his best "Sea Hunt" impression and donned our set of fins and mask and with a big knife in his teeth, went down to find a floating rope completely wrapped around the propeller. He was pretty impressed we made any headway at all with all that stuff down there.

Here I am looking slightly pained after Rob told me Horta was around that big bluff. I thought we were closer...

Well, we did make it around the bluff, and that's Horta! Ain't it pretty?

Over the next couple days, we'll do a couple more updates like:

Why do we eat out of dog bowls?

Videos at sea.

Why Horta is the most international port we will ever visit.

Anything else we can think of.

Thanks for reading - and we do read and enjoy all the comments and supporting words!