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).