Day 6...Deck's Awash!!

Wallace's Sailing Adventure on "Arbella"
Mike and Vicki Wallace
Mon 3 Dec 2012 13:54

23:17.7N 35:06.3W   And the rock ‘n roll continues…last night we hit gusts of 44 knots, and speed regularly over 10 knots, with a peak of 14.4 knots through the water, while surfing down a swell…seas over 12 feet at times…many times of over 14 knots! We have now sailed 1258 miles in 6 days…yesterday we logged in 233 miles!! Today wind continues at 25-30 knots, with 10-12 foot seas, and squalls.  The photos below were just after one squall and as we sailed to get around another (the unusual dark clouds in two of the photos)…we were taking salt water spray into the cockpit regularly also…but this is what it is all about!!  Enjoying mother nature and the vacillations of the Atlantic Ocean, as we approach the mid-way mark…fast, fast, fast and wet, wet, wet with roll, roll, roll…that’s how it has been!  Still doing meals-in-a-bowl, as Cap awaits some settled seas so he can dive into some of his sailor’s gourmet meals preparation  (hard to prepare with rock-n-roll).  ATLANTIC OCEAN history continues….on this trip I am reading, again,  “Atlantic” by Simon Winchester, a full biography of the Atlantic Ocean, my source of data…a great reading book!  While the Atlantic is 180 million year old, the first human beings to see it are pegged at 164,000 years ago, at Pinnacle Point on the western shores of the south of Africa.  At that time, cave men were gravitating to the equator, to avoid the perils of the glacial period which made further north very cold, and the equator very comfortable.  Moreover, when they discovered the relative ease of harvesting sea life from tidal ponds for food (continuously replenished, no real work, safe to gather), they stayed near the water, in caves high above the water! Going forward many millennia… Holland and France produced the first dugouts for “sailing” 10,000 years ago, and some few thousand years later, the Minoans sailed and controlled the trade in the Med, until about 6,000 B.C., when the Phoenicians, a more daring group with more robust sailing vessels came on the scene…again seeking to advantage themselves with trade opportunities.  At that time, bronze was in great demand, but required tin for the making.  With the best supply of tin on the western coast of Spain, and overland traders charging high prices, the Phoenicians were the very first to venture past the “Pillars of Hercules”  (Gibraltar) and into the “Sea of Perpetual Gloom” (the Atlantic) … the Minoans were afraid!  So the Phoenicians established a sea route from western Spain to the Med for tin (they actually sailed into the Atlantic without ever losing sight of land…obvious limits to their bravery too).  Dominating the tin trade, they next realized there was a very precious purple dye, that came from certain snails harvested at the shores of Morocco (from what is now the Isles of Mogador), and moved over land at great expense.  They sailed cautiously to the south in the Atlantic to the Morocco coast, and cornered the market on “Tyrian Purple” for 1,000 years…it was used to dye clothes and, at times, it was against the law for anyone but the privileged to wear such clothes…ounce for ounce this was worth 20 times the price of gold!  Then in 4,000 B.C. the Romans defeated the Phoenicians (and they vanished), and ruled from land, seeing a pause for several 1,000 years in sea venturing of significance in the Med…even with the peak of  Roman Empire in 114 A.D., they never really took to the seas!  Quietly, to the north during the first millennium, two other groups were developing and deploying sea venturing capabilities….the Scandinavians and the Irish…and that will be the start of another entry on the history of the Atlantic!  Mike

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