Fearlessly Freezer-less - Walvis Bay, Namibia
Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Sat 29 Dec 2012 10:37
| 22:57.057S 14:28.951E
December 29, 2012 We would have difficulty living without the steering, generator or water maker, but the freezer? It's painful, but yes, we can live without it. At least that's what we've decided. Rather than delay in Walvis Bay longer in order to address the freezer that is refusing to freeze, we've decided to make do with our other fridge/freezer and one-third less fridge/freezer space overall (under normal circumstances, we have one fridge, one fridge/freezer and one freezer). We keep reminding ourselves that other boaters don't have a freezer on board (and horrors - some don't even have refrigeration!), yet seem to fare just fine. The grocery stores in most of the rest of the world don't refrigerate eggs, so why should we bother doing so with the five dozen we have on board for the Atlantic crossing? Same thing with the twenty-five apples and oranges, but not so for the precious tomatoes - all twenty-three have a half-shelf all to themselves in our one remaining fridge. The lonely South Atlantic island of St. Helena is 1,230 miles from here, so will only take us eight-ish days to get there, but the place is not known for its ample supply of fresh fruit and vegetables (most is shipped in from South Africa, St. Helena has no airport), so we have enough provisions aboard to keep us going for the six weeks it will take us to get all the way to St. Lucia in the Caribbean. We certainly won't go hungry, and may end up eating a lot more than usual in our attempt to chow the mound of meat mostly frozen (but maybe not quite) in the less than efficient fridge/freezer that is standing in for its temporarily defunct freezer cousin. The weather forecast is just as expected for the ocean in this part of the world - nearly perfect at 10-20 knots of hopefully consistent southeast wind. The trip to St. Helena should be a pleasant and mostly comfortable broad reach, and then from there, mostly downwind to the Caribbean. We have not hired a weather router for the trip since the weather is so consistently benign. If we had hired Bruce, he would most likely have dozed off everyday while trying to find new and different ways to tell us the wind is going to blow 10-20 knots from the southeast. If anything, we'll probably be wishing for more wind on this trip. It's good we learned how to sail in 5-10 knots on the way from Sri Lanka to Chagos last year in the Indian Ocean because those skills may come in handy over the next six weeks. We are excited to get going, and looking forward to the South Atlantic's notoriously pleasant sailing conditions. We leave today (12/29) at noon, and will post our first daily blog update tomorrow (Sunday, 12/30). Anne |