FWRSWCHKACHUCK! 24.51S 179.53E
Salsa af Stavsnas
Ellinor Ristoff Staffan Ehde
Wed 13 Nov 2013 08:29
|
When I'm sailing my hearing capability is of
outmoust importance. I know there are yachtees that listen to books or music
while they sail. I could not.
My ears will tell me in an instant when the bildge
pump goes off or if a sail is not trimmed right. I can hear what speed we are
making and I can hear when the wind announces a change.
Today after a lovely morning with Andreas sitting
next to me, his head leaning on me I felt that if anything this trip is about
just that. To have all the time in the world and just sit with your child and
watch the sun go up. Well it sounds nice does it? It is, and it is rare, very
rare. Because most of the time the children will stay up and play. Instantly.
They need no coffee to get going, just UP and PLAY!
Obviously Andreas made me his favorite today
despite the fact that mommy is always the favorite. Maybe it was because when Im
up she is sleeping and the opposite. Or just because we watched the sunrise
together.
Well being someones favorite has it sides,
especially if you are sailing with your ears. By lunch the wind dropped to 3-6
knots so to keep 17 tons of Salsa going against the wind with some speed takes
concentration. There is another nice thing about wind dropping, it gets very
quite!
The sea is quite, the boat is quite. So when I sit
there with just a thumb and the indexfinger holding the steering wheel to fool
Salsa up to speed using her own apparent wind, also not letting the waves
stopping her, I need a lot of concentration and ALL my senses.
That's when my little friend from this morning
shows up in the cockpit. His eyes sparkle looking for every opportunity to play
a littel game. And LOOK! There are some ´fat feltpens left by Erika and some
tubes with some glue with glitter to be used when you make small pieces of child
art.He knows by experience that using them to draw or glue will result in a huge
punishment by Erika. So he makes second best of them. First he holds two of them
together and starts to point and shoot around the ocean. He aims and his mouth
makes the noise we miss so much "POOOOOOOFFFFFFFF!!!!" then he makes a
"CHATKACHATKACHATKACHATKACHATKACHATKACHATKA!",his salive showering the teak
around him. I try to ignore the fact that we are on one of the most remote
places on earth, where silence can be achieved with great joy for those who
likes it (I do) and here I have a five year old making so múch noise that even a
rushhour in Rome could not compete. These felt pens and tubes change rolls
quicker than anything, an overtaking car that honks like mad
"TUUUUTTTTTTT!TUUUUTTTTTTT!TUUUUTTTTTTT!TUUUUTTTTTTT!" another with screeetching
brakes and so on.
Then suddenly when the concerto is Molto Forte, he
finds a new noise "FWRSWCHACHUCK!", he likes it, he gives it a new try
"FWRSWCHACHUCK!", he tries the sound with different movements of the felt pens,
a sort of syncing done in film, "FWRSWCHACHUCK!",
then suddenly he looks at his best friend for today
and asks,
"Did you hear that?"
I look at the sail, concentrate on the tell tales,
"what?"
"FWRSWCHACHUCK!"
"Nope"
"Do you know what that is?"
"No"
"FWRSWCHACHUCK!"
"No I don't
know"
"Guess!"
"What?"
"WHAT IT IS!
FWRSWCHACHUCK!"
"Oh I guess a rocket that has an engine
problem"
"Wrong!" (I'm always wrong)
Then he picks up two tubes (thats right he never
told me what it was), with some red glue inside and starts to fly them around in
the cockpit
"UUUUUUUUIIIIIIIHHHHHH!!!!!!!"
Maybe inspired by my answer he stops in a midair
loop and asks me
"Wich one do you thing is the fastest? The rocket
that has lava or the one that just has a fire?"
"To me it sounds like lava is to heavy for a rocket
so I take the one with a fire"
"Wrong!" (I'm always wrong)
We just sailed out of the
world If you look at our coordinates a second time you
will see a big change, our longitude has changed from West to East.
The longitudes start with zero at Greenich south of
London and then divide the world in 360 degrees. But they are done 180 degrees
to the west and 180 degrees to the east. So Stockholm I think is at 18 degrees
East. The 180 degree line is the true dateline, where the timezones end with a
new date.
Well since Tonga decided to be in sync with NZ and
Fiji they have cheated the dateline.
The funny part about being here is that most paper
maps showing the world are printed logically with Greenich in the middle and
then going eastward 180 degrees on one end and the opposite at the other.Well
that is not logical for this part of the world (on the edge so to
say)
But not only paper maps have this feature, our
weather software (Meteocom) has this stupid end to it. Meaning that sailing
from Tonga to NZ you end up with nothing unless you scroll to the other side of
the entire world. And that makes for so many stupid inconviniencies that I'll
leave it with that.
Thank god the plotter and iPad charts do not have
the same problem...
The forecast tells us that tomorrow will
be a bad day, waves with significant height of 3 meters (meaning that every 200
wave will be more than 4 meters).
The wind is veering all over the place and we just
have to make the best of it. We have 679 miles to go, wich is like sailing from
Stockholm to London (birds line). But now we have sailed the same miles it is to
sail from Stockholm to Rostock/Germany (350nM).
|