Albatross- Tuna and going North 32.15.0S 175.19.4W

Salsa af Stavsnas
Ellinor Ristoff Staffan Ehde
Thu 31 Jul 2014 08:02
Alright, now we finally point our nose towards NW, but will gradually turn North.
Our position is now just S of Tongatapu and according to the forecast it is still going to blow E, meaning
halfwind but with our speed we will probably sail close hauled.
Our strategy now is to follow the wind closehauled, meaning we keep the nose as close we can to where the wind is coming from.
By doing so, as the wind veers around the High pressure system, we will change course. Or to be honest our windvane will do so.
The reason we do this is that we want to have the wind as much aft as possible as it comes to speed. In 24-30 hours up to 30 knots.
When that happens we hope we can afford to loosen the close hauled strategy and steer away from the wind.
Right now you could say we have had a 24 hour break, just making half a circle waiting for the wind to turn and go our way.
We are in the middle of the southern ocean and it is calm as an anchorage. Amazing, peaceful and tranquil.
 
Inspired by a mail from Mary and Kelvin in Falmouth we started fishing today. Andreas does not want any fish at all (he only likes ketchup, chockolade, pancakes, pizza and pasta) so I asked him to pick the worse possible squid look alike whereby we would not get any fish.
And he picked a green one. Sure enough we got a tuna within the hour. Not big, only 3 kilos, so Erika got the honour to take it in.
Dinner tonight? I made Tuna teryaki and rice (Andreas had some rice).
Lunch, Elinor made an evolution of yesterdays soup.
Being far out at sea we throw all garbage over board.
Just kidding, we keep the plastic, foils and material that does not belong in nature. Today the kids got the assignment to compress all our vaste since we left NZ into a plastic milk can (1,5 litres) and a used plastic bottle for dishwasher detergent (0,7 litres?).
They managed but our kids are for sure not used to handle garbage, they were disguised and aroused by some packages....
 
Oh yes, yesterday we should have had a desert made by the kids but it was postponed til today.
They decided to make chockolate balls (yes they are called that in Swedish). I was on watch, Ellinor sleeping. I had just cleaned the kitchen and washed the dishes so I told the kids "whatevere you do, you have to clean up after yourselfe".
So I sat down by the nav table and did some photshopping, it was quite in the cockpit (were they decided to make them balls).
Then Erika came down into the saloon and started to play with someting, I asked what was happening and she said that Andreas got the assignnment to mix the ingredients as the butter was hard....
I fell back to my work. It was all quite and after a while Andreas called up Erika. I heard a big scream as if Frankenstein had come to visit our boat (or the Troll maybe?). I run up and the´re he was, a chockolade covered six year old, I mean covered, in some parts he was smeered with a layer of 2 mm! By some reason they had decided to sit behind our big steering wheel, and there the walls were covered with chockolade, and on the floor etc...
Well just get Andreas to the shower for a major decontamination without getting chockolate elsewere in the boat...
I will not bore you with details. One thing I can tell you though, we did not get a desert today either....
When I said we had a first living sight with dolphins yesterday, that was not true, we actually had an albatross (enormous) following us for two days.
It is more an airplane than a bird, you know these wind gliders, just fly around without hardly moving the wings....
Enjoy your day as we go to night.
 
Today you have 2 choices,
call somebody you should have called long ago, or just fill your time with important stuff...
One day you might look back from a boat in the ocean and wonder, why was THAT so important?