Yummy
Gudrun V
Axel Busch
Thu 19 Apr 2012 18:04
Yesterday afternoon was wonderful sailing: calm seas, blues sky, wind 10kn, boat speed 6-7kn, and no rolling. Couldn't be much better, and Liz enjoyed it. We spent the afternoon in the cockpit under the sunshades, and then sat mesmerized as the sun went down and the stars became visible. The sky was absolutely clear, incredible visibility. I applied my newly ackquired knowledge about astronavigation to figure out the compass directions (they are all there!), and pointed out a few stars and constellations. But soon Liz' curiosity exceeded my knowledge and I had to get help from ESA's "Star Walk" app for the iPad. Fantastic piece of software, don't go looking at the sky without it.
We sat for many hours, talking and gazing at the stars. What a wonderful experience. Then I went to sleep below and Liz kept watch in the cockpit, learning french and reading. At 2am we switched, and an hour later the wind started to drop. 8kn, 6kn, 4kn. Everybody has his personal hell of things that drive him to the brink of insanity. Mine is having just not enough wind to sail properly. The boat rolls, the sails flap, the boom bangs, and there's nothing you can do. But it is too much wind to ignore it and sit still in the water! So I have to try, and I pull sheets and adjust course until the boat sails just enough to not make those horrible sounds. And half an hour later the wind changes slightly, and the whole procedure starts again. Torture!
After three hours of "torment" the wind changed to east, and I could pull the parasailor up. Ha! Liz says there are three ways to deal with stress: remove the cause, change your believes and values, or your reaction. My favorite is removing the cause. Now we're sailing along slowly with 4.5kn, pretty much pointed at our destination.
Pilot charts and gib files say there is more wind south, 20kn at about 8:00S. But 20kn means going fast, and Liz doesn't like that. Other parts of the crew like sailing fast very much, but they also like to keep the other part of the crew happy. Even more than sailing fast. So we want 10 to 15kn. With 5kn at 5:00S, and 20kn at 8:00S, I reckon a little south of 6:00S would be a good place to be. We'll know tomorrow or the day after if that's correct.
In the matter of the broken kindle there is good news: Thanks to the software Calibre I could remove the digital rights management from my purchased books and re-format them, and now I can read them on the iPad and my old Sony reader. Yay! And the "Emergency Navigation" book is getting better towards the end, especially the sketches are quite nice.
But even better than that is the fact that Liz is right now making a batch of her world famous "Twix" cookies. Maybe little wind has it's merits, too. Twix. Yummmy ...