Wednesday, April 29, 2009
We finally left Panama yesterday around 10:00am. I was a little sad to be leaving the Panama, but happy to be leaving Panama City. Although PC was easy as far as provisioning the boat you can find just about anything and they were relatively inexpensive. The downside of all of that was that I have totally overloaded the boat which is causing me some anxiety. Indy was a little low but not too bad and then we bought eight six gallon cans jerry jugs that we filled with fuel which put her over the top. Last night on watch the when the wind kicked up I found her slow to respond. Not an ideal situation. However, I have learned a valuable lesson. .....well, with much help from Otis.
The first six hours of our trip yesterday were dead calm and blisteringly hot...just brutal. We all kept taking cold showers just for the five minutes of relief they offered.
Upon leaving the kids and I made little well wishes cards for Neptune. Then we picked a few flower buds off of my Impatience, we each said a few words and flung them into the ocean as our gift. Hopefully he will be kind to us throughout our journey. However, I am taking no chances. We will repeat the ritual when we leave for the Marquesas but this time I am going to give him a little rum, for good measure.
We did see three sting rays leaping out five/six feet out of the water flapping around which was cool. They stayed with us for about half and hour. I think it would be safe to say they were having some type of mating ceremony.
I napped yesterday afternoon for two hours while O played around with the asym sail. Last night I did the 7-12 watch. We had nice wind about 15kts coming out of the strbd back quarter, both sails up and were prancing along at 8.5/9kts. I had hoped to use the watch to return some emails but there were about four other ships around so I had to stay outside. It was nice to be out again actually. I am not a huge fan of long passages and I know that six day is not considered "long", but it is a nice refresher. I think you become a little more impatient with the shorter hops because there is always that light at the end of the tunnel. With the longer ones there is no point counting down the days/hours etc. You just resign yourself that your life will be at sea for the next six, seven...nine days and that is that. At least that is my frame of mind now...in three days it maybe drastically different and I will be counting the seconds.
Yesterday the kids were a nightmare. They were running around trashing everything, screaming and fighting...ugh, it was awful. Last night I decided that I needed to have a schedule so we knew what was going on and they knew what to expect.
The schedule (and I use that word loosely) goes something like this:
8:30/9:00 School for Ben, Sam can watch Sesame Street and then hang out with whoever is not teaching.
11:00: Kids have free time
12:00 Lunch/clean up/overall tidy of the boat...for the hundredth time already that day
1:00 Downtime/ this is when either O or I go for a nap with Sam. Ben can play his ds, watch a movie or hang out with whoever is on watch. I am having him read The Magic Tree house books to me.
3:30-5:00: Craft time! Today we are painting paper mache masks that I bought in Panama.
That is what we have come up with thus far and we will be tweaking it a million times before we get it right. However, the kids were much calmer today.
So, as of now O and I are doing four hours on/four off throughout the night. Last night when O was on watch we hit a patch of pretty squally weather which forced us to take in the head sail and put two reefs in the main. He did the watch from 12-5:45!!!! I was up quite a bit helping with the sails but it is still nice to have that much sleep at night.
So, that is about it.
Oh, we saw whales!!! While I was on watch two HUGE bioluminescent shapes swam out from under our boat. I think they were whales because of their size. It was kind of freaky because our depth sounder would suddenly read 4ft and this huge shape swam out. Sam was sitting on my lap when it happened and we both yelled for O. O and Ben came up, missed it all and O went back below. Ben stayed and was able to see the second shape. He looked at me and said "ok, everyone just stay calm". Obviously, as the parent it is my job to stay calm but inside I was flipping out a little bit.
This morning, again it was flat calm and we saw about six whales on three different occasions. I don't care how many times you have seen these majestic creatures they never cease to amaze me.
I must run back to my post. I will try and write a little something everyday.

Due to the latest computer crash I lost a lot of addresses. If you have not heard from us in a while it may be that I do not have you address anymore. Please send me an email so I can update my list..