Update Special - Reports from Two Sailing Days

Here's the latest from our sailors!

Thursday’s Report

We decided to get ambitious today after several days of lazing around reading and sleeping. (Which we still did today anyway.)

This morning we jibed to the SW as part of our tacking through the band of trade winds. We have been zig-zagging between 23 and 24 degrees north. We had light winds so we rolled up the jib and hoisted the colorful spinnaker. Then, time for food!

I went below deck and took out the ingredients for bread and got to work. Yeast, warm water - before you know it, a gooey mess on the counter that I could knead. It rose very well in the warm cabin. After an hour I popped the bread in the oven. I must tell you, baking bread in the middle of the ocean while flying a spinnaker is not for the faint of heart.

When the wind hit 20 knots the spinnaker had to come down. We stowed it and went back to using the jib.

The bread was done by then so I went below again and got out the eggs we bought in the Canaries. Do you know that if you buy eggs that have never been refrigerated they will keep for more than a month if you turn the carton over every two days? We learned that in our trip planning. So, fresh bread and eggs meant we had FRENCH TOAST with honey on it for a late lunch today. How civilized! How land-like! If only we had powdered sugar. They were great.

Afternoon time for Pat and I was reading and more short naps - remember we only get three hours of sleep at a time during the night. We each get two watches of three hours so a nap during the day makes it all OK. We may switch watches with Pat going from 7 to 10, Tom from 10 to 1, Pat from 1 to 4, and Tom from 4 to 7.

We are making good progress - today at noon we were 2,791 nautical miles from Port Saint Lucie, FL which means we got about 120 miles closer than yesterday. We also changed our clocks back two hours which means this is a 26 hour day! It feels like it will never end! Beautiful sunsets - we are taking a photo every day at noon and at sunset. Maybe we can make and sell Remedios flip books. We had a good sized sailfish on the deck today - it was about the size of a hot dog, and very dead by the time we found it. We have gone two days without sighting any kind of ship or boat. It is really deserted out here.

Friday’s Report - The Day of the Dolphin

Today, Friday the 19th around noon, we noticed a few dolphins next to the boat, the first of this leg. Pat tossed me a camera and I went forward. Pat has been working out, so it took him a few more minutes to get his vest cinched on to join me. What we saw was a pod of dolphins, 12 to 15 of them, playing in the front of the boat for a full 30 minutes. (Wish we could send the video clips we shot but our ocean email system is the equivalent of dial-up and only text is allowed.)

It was just amazing. They would gather right up under the anchors maybe eight at a time, swim there a while, and then head off to the side or under the boat. Several others would take their place right up front. We were afraid they would hit their heads on the anchor when the boat nosed down yet they missed it every time. What fun! A few of them were rather big and some were quite white on the bottom which we could see because some would roll over and swim upside down. We'll post the video when we get back.

Other news and updates:

We have not seen another boat/ship for four days. That really makes us feel alone out here.

Pat used the beard trimmer to cut his hair, so now we both have home-made haircuts and we look like escapees from the old TV show “Our Gang.”

We are exercising as best we can with our pull-up bar and rubber bands, and doing pushups in the cockpit with our feet up higher on the seat backs. No broken noses, yet.

The temperature is pretty nice - maybe 80 during the day and 70 at night - quite comfortable sailing.

We are doing pretty well. Last night as it got dark we were both reading our Kindles with our headlamps, looking like miners taking a correspondence course.

Despite enjoying the French toast, we just don't seem to have much of an appetite. That makes some sense. If someone put you on a teeter-totter for a couple days, nonstop, and then asked you if you wanted a hot meal, WHILE STILL ON THE TEETER-TOTTER, most folks would say no. Especially if you then had to do the dishes from the seat of the teeter-totter. This at-sea thing is a pretty good, if expensive, diet plan. Pat calls it Ocean Anorexia, I call it the Bouncing Plastic Prison Slim Plan.

Posted by Peggy on behalf of Pat and Tom, aboard Remedios, on the Atlantic Ocean