33 Degrees of Wonder
20 June 2022
• (2.52n, 83.22w)
by robin
The sky ahead cleared, the wind shifted to the south and the bow of the boat was at last pointed towards the Galapagos. We had been alternately pointing towards the Venable Ice Shelf in West Antarctica and the Line Islands in the Western Pacific, neither places we are have enough food and water to reach. With the wind shift, I might to able to get the 450 nautical miles to our destination by breakfast. We are all used to glancing at the ETA on our phone to plan our lives. Focusing on the distance to go on a tacking boat is dangerous and demoralizing. It seems like you might never get there.
Kalr and I avoid the topic of how far it is addressing immediate decisions like reefing and tacking. The wonders of degrees emerged from the ETS. A degree of latitude is 60 nautical miles (a nautical miles is 6000 feet). Useful information when you live in nautical miles per hour (knots). Our wind, the boat speed and the currents are all reported in knots. Wonderfully, once you know a degree of latitude is 60 nautical miles you hold the key to decoding any map with latitude marked on it. As we approach the equator longitude is also getting to be 60 nautical miles. Makes our off the cuff ETA math simpler. We guess we will get there Friday or Saturday. If we had kept going the 6 knots in the right direction this morning maybe Thursday but we have learned not to fall for that demoralizing trap.
Halfway there and we have settled into a passage routine. Everything that is going to fall has crashed. We have caught most of the food that is going bad. Unusually a lot this passage: a cracked egg I pitched into the sail, a cucumber the dissolved and a cabbage that produced green slime. Some of this is the price we pay for shopping at an upscale supermarket in Panama rather than a farmers market where the vegetables are fresher and not refrigerated. Karl has actually been reading a book. Reading during our first ocean crossing was quite contentious. With less technology a watchstander was really paying attention. Many heated discussions between Beryl the bookworm and Karl ensured. AIS technology and alarms that alertis us to ships ~20 miles away, our fear of a monster cargo ship running us over are reduced. Even with the alerts a tanker named Karla heading to Panama did surprize Karl immersed a book, a gift from Beryl.
The Halfway cake was vanilla decorated with chocolate frosting and bee pollen. We are trying to eat all the food we think will be confiscated on entry to the Galapagos. Nuts are finished working on the Panamanian bee pollen. I have served it twice already today.
Bird note #1: 4 ghost birds the eh pre-dawn., Still not sure with black heads and tern like flight. No new fish scales on deck so they are off the hook for being responsible for all the fish debris.
Bird note #2: Three booby day. Two brown and one masked. The brown soar in the boat slipstream.
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