This has been the most eventful day yet! For starters, I think we
crossed some sort of ancient leyline of dark energy in the nighttime,
because all sorts of things broke at the same time. My Hydroflask’s
cap’s carrying handle snapped, one of the straps came loose from the
sole of my sandal…oh, and the boat’s alternator went kaput. What that
means for us is running the engine no longer charges the batteries. We
still get power from the solar panels, but we can’t rely on those at,
well, night. We’ve also come to an expected lull in the wind, so we’ve
been motoring for 24 hours straight to push through the quiet patch.
Since the autopilot used while motoring draws a decent amount of power,
we aren’t using it for this period, and instead whoever’s on watch has
to actually steer! With our hands, and a big wheel! Like we’re living in
pirate times! Honestly, it made my first night watch in this system fly
by, since I had to actually focus on maintaining a heading. Once the
wind picks up again, and the engine’s not running constantly, Eric will
dig around in the engine room and try to get the alternator up and
running again. Preserving electricity also means no using the water
maker at the moment, so I washed tonight’s dishes with some saltwater
scooped up with a bucket on a rope (and then rinsed with fresh water at
the end).

In other exciting news, Dad saw a large splash of some sort in the
distance. He didn’t see the beast that made the splash, but our best
guess is that a big tuna chasing something upwards didn’t realize it had
run out of ocean and breached. We’ve also made visual contact with two
different sailboats, or possibly the same sailboat twice, for the first
time since we left Fiji. They were both on the distant horizon, so we
got nowhere near them, but the second one was named Rumpus according to
the scanning system, which is in my professional opinion a great name
for a boat.

As we tiptoe closer to the end of our cross-ocean voyage, I find my
thoughts drifting more and more often to the great non-can-based meals
I’m going to eat, and eagerly await the sensation of the ground staying
perfectly still beneath my feet.

--
Sent via OCENSMail satellite email service.
www.ocens.com