It’s hard to believe that I can so quickly forget how rolly polly the waters can get. After so many days on land recently I forgot how the swells can suck the energy right from you and give you that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach. With 15 to 25 knot winds since we left Rangiroa, we have enjoyed some good speed but at the expense of feeling well. We have in fact made some great time even though we have had our main sail’s second reef in place making it as small as it can get without pulling it down entirely. With that and our jib in and out today we were scheduled to arrive in Papeete around midnight tonight. Seems as we will not go into a port we are not familiar with late at night we have purposefully slowed our speed down substantially by pulling in our jib completely. Our navigation system will auto calculate our TTG (Time To Go) based on our current speed. This simple change in our sails has changed our speed from 6.8 knots to about 4.2 knots which is just enough to give us an estimated arrival time of about 5:30 am. This is just around the time when it starts to get light out on the water. We may need to slow things down a little bit more but we will wait and see once we get a bit closer to our destination as we still have about 9 hours until the arrival time.
In the late morning everyone was feeling a little sluggish and under the weather. This was around the time when I started to bake the cookie dough that Kirsten had made up. Everyone else was outside under the bimini. Alyssa was telling the younger kids some fables from memory amongst some time that we all took to just sit around and talk. It was a magical morning to all be disconnected from the world and to be connected in some way to one another discussing a variety of different topics from work to technology to university education and much more. I think these are the moments I will treasure the most as we take time aside to just sit around and talk. Of course it was also fun to devour the chocolate chip, cashew, walnut cookies I baked up at the same time… although I think I ate too much of the dough to keep much of an appetite for anything else.
The highlight of the afternoon was the squall that passed through. In about 5 minutes those of us outside got thoroughly drenched. It only took about 30 seconds to fill up a 6 gallon pail that was positioned next to the mainsail winch.
In the evening, Jaeden made a double batch of crepes for the rest of the family for dinner. Half of the crew just nibbled away at the meal as they really did not have much of an appetite all day long. The other half were all too happy to devour the rest. It’s one of our favourite meals although it sure takes a lot of time to make in a small kitchen.
Norm, I had to laugh at your post. It reminded me of how much of our time we thought about and talked about – FOOD. On a boat, it seems to take an inordinate amount of attention. We’re excited to here about your arrival in Papeete. We love your posts!!!!
Not just run of the mill food either ! I don’t even cook the gourmet food in my regular size kitchen that they do in their small galley ! But then Kir always was a much better and more diverse cook than me on land and showed her love to people with her scrumptious food ! My kids miss her cinnamon buns and I miss her curry !