Author: Pete

Location: 08°35.981S 120°27.125W

Date: 11:00 April 12 to 11:00 April 13

Day 14 at sea. Two weeks! Can you imagine spending two weeks in the same 2 rooms of your house? I suppose if you live in Northern Michigan in the winter, that’s not too much of a stretch of the imagination. We discussed our lives in the real world and cited all the things we’d be getting done in two weeks of our normal efficient worker bee cadence. It seems like our days out here go so fast though. We have our routines, our duties aboard the boat, food to cook, dishes to do, then time to do our own things. Still astounds me that every day there is something that I didn’t get time to do. How does that happen when there’s seemingly nothing to do?

Lower winds today gradually turning aft, so we put up the spinnaker! Gave us a boost of a knot or so, and no flopping headsail to annoy the crew. A little pink and purple are welcome changes in our general world color scheme these days. The big, parachute of a sail also provides some welcome shade on the trampoline in the hot afternoon sun to sit and play guitar.

We’ve been checking in with the Tangaroa fleet in the afternoon really briefly for any emergency traffic. Apparently it was ‘Tantoa’ only on the frequency list sheet they gave me before we headed out. It’s Tangaroa. Sounds like there may have been some trouble in paradise with some broken bits on a boat well ahead of us, not in our fleet. Tallulah Ruby suggested a quick afternoon monitoring of an emergency frequency in case anything of the sort happened to one of us. Good to have safety measures in place.

Today was a sad occasion, as we finished our last remaining fresh fruit. It’s cans from here on out, baby.

All good tonight aboard Tayrona. The moon has come and gone. The stars are out in force. I’ve been enamored with Scorpio in the southern sky. There are some great astronomical features around it, globular star clusters, the Scorpio Jewel Box, and the red supergiant Antares, all well visible through a good set of binoculars. Unfortunately, I’ll have to wait until we’re back in a flat anchorage to really scope them. Just get a good dose of nausea from eyeing the heavens too long on the deck of a rolling boat.