Friday 21 June 2019

Wind continued good through the night and motion moderated, but morning brought higher sea with a promise of worse to come as the day wears on and less wind. Gosh darn! or stronger words to that effect. Cranked motor and adjusted genoa to stabilize and hurry us along. A shower brought apparent wind up to 20 for awhile, eased the roll and had us skipping along at near hull speed. Sweet. Didn't last long enough with insufficient rain to clear windward deck of accumulated flying fish, but there may be more coming. Happy hour in Jacare scheduled to begin at 1930. Be there or be square.

It's only been a little over six hundred years since Chris (Cristóbal Colón) headed out for India and found North America. There are navigators who can still find it today. He didn't locate South America until six years later. We did, but of course had the advantage of knowing it's there and were actually looking for it. Good thing he ran aground in San Salvador as he was either woefully poor at math or someone seriously underestimated the size of earth. He never would have made it to Asia before running out of food or having a mutiny. Poor sot didn't even have the place called Columbus. That buttinsky Vespucci didn't come around until 1499, but got naming rights.

Except for a bright moon would have seen glow from land this morning. Should have the continent in sight before dark although sunset occurs rather early. Since the sun is at equinox, as far away from Jacare as it gets at 23.5 degrees north over the Tropic of Cancer, we are at the eastern edge of UTC -3 (in fact past the meridian into -2 territory) and even though we are only seven degrees south, the sun goes down just past 1700.

Starting to have visions of arrival with an intact mast. It would be a wretchedly bad ending to lose it after more than a week of fretful effort. Would be like the little train-that-could getting nearly to the top of the hill, thinking he can, and having his boiler explode. Children the world over would be in counselling for life. No matter the ending it will be over in another ten hours or so. Let the debauchery begin.

Jack & Jan