Maximum Lettuce

Catmojo
Matt
Thu 18 Nov 2021 09:30
26:16N 17:29W at 0919 GMT.

Up anchor at 8am yesterday (Wednesday) and off down the east coast of Gran Canaria. Ahab the pirate black parasailor/spinnaker dragged Mojo along (after two hours unpacking it and rope-swapping) at up to 12knots in the afternoon, but the wind dropped in late afternoon so I've motorsailed throught the night and likely doing the same for quite a while yet.

This morning there is following sea and 8-9knots from NE, so motorsailing at 6-7knots rather than Strictly Sailing at 4ish. So I suppose the strategy here is that rather than taking crew I'm simply carrying their weight in extra diesel instead.

New-to-me experiments on this trip include trying to keep carrots fresh by keeping them in a sealed plastic container full of water in the fridge. I'm also attempting to keep lettuce longer than a few days by refrigerating it in sealed containers and interleaved with paper towel. Deb on another boat in Las Palmas wasn't At ALL optimistic about either of these ideas, says I've killed the lettuce, tsk, so, whatever. Lettuce isn't vital but very nice in tuna salad sandwiches. Yes, I caught the tuna at the supermarket.

No, I haven't brought any Big Macs this time. That wasn't really a success, possibly because I haven't had the right training. There is (or used to be) a Hamburger University in the US, run by MacDonalds I think? I've often fancied going there. No, I don't know if it's a three or four year course. Or it could be just a few months or perhaps just a week or so? I imagine a 3 or 4 year course would include History of Hamburgers including the moment Ray Kroc invented the Big Mac in 1955. Plus perhaps some Applied Maths and deriving Theory Of Hamburgers from first principles, although probably not. Either way, with a degree from the Hamburger University I'd probably know how to defrost and re-heat Big Macs without hard frozen bits in the middle or the whole lot falling to bits. Maybe they also know how to keep lettuce? That might be a PhD though.

Back in the UK, friend James is keeping an eye on things and has recommended Go South. This time he really means it - there's not much wind on the normal way to the carib at the moment. So I'm on course for 15N30W which is almost exactly the latitude of Martinique. This is what the ancient mariners did - get to the latitude they want and then sail along that latitude with their navigational stick thing, somehow. This route is also the warmest soonest - south ASAP.

This morning I typed some blog into the mac, then attempted and failed to transfer it to the PC which sends emails, and typed it all again dammit. But then I got into it, and now it's a bit late. Oh well.