As I write, we're motor-sailing towards our waypoint off the coast (we're carefully managing our speed to arrive at just the right time - adjusting sails, adding or removing engine assist as needed. Sofia says: "Sails up, sails down. Engine on, engine off. Speed up, slow down... what else is new?") Several other WARC boats are on schedule to arrive there at the same time, so we'll have a small rendezvous at sea to look forward to, bright and early Sunday morning.
After spending the last 24 hours under more or less grey skies, things have cleared completely, and we've got nothing but blue sky and blue water as far as we can see. We're hoping it will stay this clear for some more star-gazing this evening.
Our dragonfly mystery deepens, as now we've got several of them buzzing around the boat. They could, we suppose, have been blown out here on a past storm, but what have they been surviving on? We've had one shearwater (we fool ourselves into believing it's the same one, but that seems unlikely, really) that comes by and cruises back and forth behind the boat occasionally, ever hopeful.
We had one suicidal squid fling itself onto the deck last night; and Friday evening had a spectacular dolphin visit, involving a whole pod who couldn't content themselves with mere underwater bow-wave surfing, but also performed tandem (sometimes trio) full body jumps out of the water, as well as actually surfing in and jumping out of neighboring waves. It was quite a show. Sean saw some dolphins last night, too, leaving a trail of luminescence in their wakes.
Anne managed to fling herself (unintentionally, mind you) against the shelf over her bunk in the middle of the night thanks to an ill-timed urge to sit up and fluff her pillow combined with a surprise wave, and has an amusingly-colored black eye to show for it. We're thinking about taking bets on what color it'll be by the time we get in... Perhaps it'll just lend credence to Sean's favorite boat motto: "The beatings will continue until (or perhaps even if) morale improves!"
Chewin' up the miles, we are,
- the WT crew
6 Nov 2010 14:08 UTC (16:08 local time)
27 53.127 S
36 02.225 E
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