CONDITIONS: Continued cooler (85 instead of 90+), dryer air, winds overnight died at 0600. Clear skies.
PROPULSION: Tacking upwind last night. We've been in "noserlies" for most of this passage and thus progress is slow because we can only point 50 degrees from our destination - no closer - because the sails begin acting like flags with no forward pull. Motoring today.
MECHANICALS: Changed watermaker backflush filter. When the generator is used, typically 3 hours per day, we can use the reverse osmosis watermaker to make pure water from sea water. This allows us to use much more water than we were used to on Mystique. We shower every day which is a real luxury!
CREW CONDITION: Joe spending time alone coming to grips with losing his beloved golden retriever, Rain. Rest of us doing great.
EXCITEMENT: Mike is shaving today! We stopped the boat in the dead calm sea and went for a swim. Top 1' of water like a bath tub. 1' down was at least 10 degrees cooler (Humbold current waters?). We have a red-footed booby...
...who has taken up residence on our bow pulpit. Got some great pics through the forward hatch. I made dinner consisting of tuna, green and red peppers, onion, and anything else I could find in the fridge with mayo served over quartered tomatoes and lettuce. Cookies for dessert. Tomorrow we will cross the Equator before we reach San Cristobol in the SE Galapagos!! We'll celebrate with a tribute to Neptune and we'll share some of our rum with him.
COMMENTS: You may ask, "What on earth do you do all day?" We each take a two-hour watch three times per 24 hours, so that's 6 hours. We sleep on either side of our watches averaging 8 hours. We each get our own breakfast and Deb generally organizes lunches. Then we rotate fixing dinners and doing dishes.
The rest of the time we're doing things like replenishing food we've consumed from the 20 or so storage areas, most which are below the floorboards. Deb and Jan have created a spreadsheet showing each foodstuff, the starting quantity and where it is stored. So today I needed to put more tonic water in the fridge so I looked on the spreadsheet and found it was stored under the floor in front of the washing machine. Crackers, by the way, are stored IN the washing machine as it is not used, ever.
And we also spend time each day cleaning the boat, reading books (Kindles, iPads, and real paper books), and chatting and telling stories. Or discussing things like, "What can the US government do to improve its relationships around the world?", or "Can a cruising sailboat have zero negative impact on the environment?"
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