Finally a break in the wind and I can catch my breath and do something besides ricocheting off every hard surface in the boat. It has been a fairly raucous sail from Galapagos to here...not your typical 10 knots downwind as I was promised but 22-25 knots and hard on our sails. Too much heeling and way too many stiff waves to thump down from...it is a struggle just to remain upright!!! But today has been delightful as we move along comfortably with a double rrefed main and our big reacher sail...doing between 9 and 9 1/2 knots and even remaining fairly (remember this is a sailboat so that's relative) straight up. It's been 7 days since we left and we've clocked 1270 mi.( my longest sail by quite a bit...and I think even Bill and Gram's longest without stopping) We have seen absolutely nothing but blue water, blue skies and grey skies and each other...oh yeah a few birds and some flying fish but no other signs of life on this planet. It is definitely out there this Easter Island to where we are headed!!
So, our days consist of reading, eating, watching a little prerecorded TV, and for the two guys napping. I still have not gotten the hang of that but feel like I'm sleeping as much as I don't regularly anyway so it's all OK. We have been able to shower outside but you should have seen me trying to wash my hair 2 days ago. We were heeled so far over that I was afraid to close my eyes which one needs to do when trying to get the soap out of the hair(especially someone with as much hair as me) so I had to scrunch all up in the corner of the cockpit on the floor and go for it...just couldn't wait any longer. Definitely feel my hippie days in Thorndike with the once/week baths have done me a good ways to this roughing it...lucky it is much much warmer than that drafty old farmhouse was!!!
We were touched on Sat morning as we got so many emails from friends worried that we had been swallowed up by the Tsunami. We pretty much slept thru it but that would be because we were out here in 13,000 ft of water(very safe) . Bill was on watch and did note that the boat kind of shuddered at about the time it would have gone by but did not think of it being anything other than wind change until later. So, now added to all the other things I can worry and obsess about I have to add Tsunamis. Who would have thunk??? We did hear from boats still in our anchorage in the Galapagos that 10 ft of water rushed in and out quite quickly and that later they realized the town had been evacuated to the hills. The port captain did not feel it his duty to evacuate the boats which was done on two other islands as well as on Easter from what we have heard. He was a bit flakey we thought and this certainly proves it.
Looks as if we will get to Easter Fri or Sat if the winds stay similar to what they are currently. Can't wait to touch land again and to be able to explore this fasc inating island. More to follow.. J
No comments:
Post a Comment