Guest Blogger Piescik
11 June 2010 | 25 miles off Cape Hatteras
Guest Blogger Piescik
It has been long trip, but we are in the rhythm now. We have caught three Dorado (Update: final score was 4) and eaten one, we are starting on eating the second now. We have also landed 4 or five Barracuda and hooked but failed to land two unknown. Troy is a good cook, and is seasoning a few pieces of fillet as I type. He is going to cook brownies next.
When we first left the Bahamas (Sunday night), there was a LOT of lightning and thunderstorm activity. It had me pretty un-nerved, as I have no experience with it and I don't want any. It was good for me to have two sailors on board that have been in the middle of a lot of thunderstorms. At one point I was sailing right toward an anvil shaped thunder head with lots of straight vertical strikes under it. I had permission from Capt. Alan to "run away", which I bravely did. All of us came up on deck, and decided to do one big circle for about an hour, first running away, then running to avoid its path. You may have seen this on the track from our transponders. It worked, and we were able to motor between two of the more spectacular thunderheads. The rain was so heavy it looked like land masses on the radar.
Today the skies are clear and sunny, wind is light and from our destination, but should clock around in a few hours, making progress easier. We are sailing at a reasonable but slow pace, and we are listening to Madeline Perioux (sp), singing that "its all right".
It is nice that Alan has a watermaker. This allows us sponge baths and washing hair without being overly concerned about rationing.
The crew is recovering from some fairly active seas last night, which combined with sails slatting from dead downwind sailing and a cross-track swell made sleeping very difficult. I was well rested and was able to let Troy sleep a little extra, repaying a courtesy he extended me earlier.
Captain Alan seems to be feeling frisky; he just now asked me if I swing. The good news is that he and Becky are taking swing dancing lessons and he was practicing in the cockpit. The sail has not been THAT long. We have not spent too much time and mental effort on infantile double entendre, but we were apt to interpret Alan's comments differently since he announced "that he had lunchmeat coming out of his butt". Both Troy and I selected other options from the menu.
It looks like we will arrive sometime tomorrow morning to mid-day depending on how much we run the motor, and how soon the wind clocks.