Passage Cookies

Wednesday 29 July 2022

After seven days we've settled into a disorganized routine (oxymoron?). Dinner and watches are set, but everything else, outside of impromptu head, sail, toilet or leak kerfuffles and sail trimming, is a leisurely amble through the day. Plenty of time to read, talk, nap, poke at various places on new, poorly organized, hybrid/touchscreen chart plotter to see what happens and write meandering twaddle for one's own aberrant amusement.

Marie baked about a hundred of her famous passage cookies. Not sure how notorious they actually are, but we like them. Ten centimeters (four inches) in diameter and made with nutmeg and apricot preserves, they're Jan's and my nibble with morning tea. Sometimes we have another for evening dessert, but feel guilty eating more. Although none of us suffers mal de mer, nutmeg, at least in quantity, is suppose to help. Of course eating enough cookies for a persuasive dose of palliative requires keeping them down, which is decidedly challenging while hurling over the rail. Serious suffers say at first they're afraid they'll die, then in due course fear they won't. We have friends who've circumnavigated the globe and get sick virtually every time out. Perseverance, stubbornness or lunacy?

Approaching area of enervated air requiring engine run to maintain momentum. Without generator, Yanmar is sole method of heating water for showers. Not so bad at 28C, but 11 is a titch nippy for us little wood ducks. No worries, a military shower (heavy application of deodorant) will keep us tolerable until such time as.

Sitka is twenty four hundred nm north northeast of Oahu. We've been sailing as high as possible to prevent drifting too far west. Now with wind veering southeast we're almost three points free and have gained a suspicion of speed. Plan north course while motoring, then mostly direct as wind comes around to northwest. May have north or even northeast for short period, but can either use westing acquired and sail southeast, tack over and back or motor into it and stay direct. Or, as these things often go, GRIB (Ghastly Representation of Inexcusable Blarney) is a steaming pile of caca and we whip out plan B or whichever letter we're down to as strategies turn sequentially to custard.

Jack & Jan