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We’re cooking fabulous dinners and are enjoying our outdoor dining room. More to come when we arrive in Bermuda. -- Jane (This perspective comes from a reformed power boater with a zillion days at sea but mostly coast-wise in the charter industry.) While I have done 20 or so coast-wise deliveries this is my first trip across the big pond. We finally got off the dock on the 17th with a minimum of to-do. As ships Engineer (assigned not requested) I got several pre departure projects to insure the success of the overall endeavor which let me have another good look at the boat overall. The first couple of days gave us some incredible sailing conditions but some nighttime squalls. Big Al handled them all like the performance cruiser that she is. Al just hauls ass. Right now we are very close hauled and hauling booty. YES that’s the way I like it. We had to deal with a few mechanical anomalies but nothing crazy and in line with boats in general. We are getting a good baseline on fuel consumption as there is not enough wind right now to make any way. That means almost nothing for Big Al as she makes the most of very little. The crew had a few seasickness rough spots early on but gradually pulled out of it. Now on day three everyone is in good spirits and getting acclimated to the boat and one another. We are 2 days from Bermuda and tentatively plan on a day or 2 of resupplying and rest before the long haul to Azores. The cooks aboard are making the best of the ships stores therefore my planned diet will fail. Dang! Looking forward to a bit of time to work up a magazine article or two to submit just to stay busy. -- Tom We are having a great time on board, sailing hard, eating well, chatting away, and enjoying the wild life: so far we have seen flying fish, Portuguese men of war, tropic birds (who fish with their tails), boobies (is that really their name or are the guys pulling my leg again, taking shameless advantage of my ocean newness?), and a few black dolphins. I realize I have never seen the horizon stretch around me in a perfect circle before –and no matter how much we move, we stay in the middle of that circle. When the sea is rough that horizon is fuzzy, because of the waves; when the ocean is calm, like today, the horizon is a fine line. I am lucky to have the 3-6 am watch, so every day I first see the ocean bathed in moonlight, and then I watch spectacular sunrises. It is as if someone slowly turns a dimmer to light up the sky. Mark is trying to teach Jane and me about the physics of sailing. I can’t speak for Jane but the concepts of lift and drag, as well as high and low pressure, are a stretch for my humanities brain. -- Marjo |
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