Daily Archives: March 20, 2015

Getting into rhythm

This is the beginning of our seventh day at sea and life is good. Last night we passed the westernmost point we reached last year before disaster struck, but of course we’re much further north this time. It’s cloudy, which is nice for onboard comfort but not so good for the solar panels. We’re doing well with power so far, even with the 24-hour running of the nav equipment and autopilot, and the frequent use of the SSB radio. A word about the SSB, which means Single Side Band. It’s a marine radio with a modem attached that connects to the laptop and makes it possible to send and receive email, get weather info and send position reports, all at an incredibly slow rate. But it’s radio and it’s free, unlike our satellite phone which does the same thing faster and more reliably but very expensively. We like to use the SSB as much as possible, but there’s apparently a dearth of ham radio operators on this side of the Pacific and I’ve had trouble connecting to a relay station all week. Finally this morning I tried again as soon as I got up and managed to squeeze out the email and position reports that have been stacking up in the outbox. So check the Winlink and Yotreps links to the right and see if our position has updated. It may not be completely up to date but one way or another we’ll try to keep up with some way for you to track us on our passages. We haven’t had a drop of rain, but with the cloud cover the air is heavy and salty. The last of our bread has succumbed to mold and I dug a 1-lb. bag of flour out of the guest room to try a recipe that calls for dumping the ingredients in a gallon Ziploc bag and mixing it by squishing it with your hands. I sure hope it works because having to clean up a doughy bowl and breadboard doesn’t really appeal to me in these seas. It’s not bad, mind you, the sailing is glorious, it’s just that accomplishing anything takes certain feats of gymnastics that are beyond my energy level today. It’s much more pleasant to sit outside and watch the birds and occasionally dolphins and contemplate the beauty of the sea.

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