day 97 - future sailors
Jamie here - last night we endeavoured a feat of sailing excellence from tahanea to fakarava. All auxiliary engines were engaged and the team pulled through Iike a fleet of oxen. A true pleasure to be part of. Now we restock at the shops, pick up a new crew member and onwards to repair the cutlass bearing.
Now; many fans have been waiting for tonight as i reveal a new feature of my blog posts. I can now introduce to you….
WORD OF THE DAY. Jamies word 0f the day is a fun and all inclusive tid bit of genius I will be adding to the end of each blog entry whereby i state a word that i Iike or feel inspired by followed by my interpretation of the definition and a use of the word in a sentence. without further ado:
Todays word of the day (WOD) :
Talon. Talon - a sickle-shaped tool or instrument used by avian friends to grab, attack or dig.
Sentence: BELIEVE ME, IM TALON YOU THE TRUTH
Ellen here
Had a goofy and lively sail last night. It’s been fun to sail off and on anchor, and we tacked out the reef pass last night without issue as well - who needs a motor anyway. It does seem like everywhere we go is upwind, even when we already sailed upwind to get there and we’re heading back the opposite way. So it was bashy and wet, like usual, with Bluebird galloping along at 9 kts. My 12am - 3am watch was a tangle of interlocking squalls, with the background wind slowly building to 25 kts and clocking around to the north. Sometimes a squall would add to the wind, sometimes it would calm it. The longest one was a doozy, and in my reluctance to go forward on deck in sideways downpour I waited a half hour (surely it will pass like the others…) before waking others to drop the double-reefed main as that and the working jib were too much sail for the wind vane. That operation was completely absurd - it may be the first time I’ve worn a safety harness and a snorkel mask to stand on one foot and tie knots, and the resulting “folding job” on the mainsail was pretty hilarious to be displaying while sailing into the anchorage on the jib this morning - looked a bit like when a 2-yr old tries to wrap their first Christmas present and has a tantrum in the middle of the process. Today we succeeded, on very little sleep, at buying some of the fresh produce before it was all gone, approximately 3 hours after the supply ship unloaded it all. Wahoo for salad!
I’ll send this as everyone else is asleep :)