St. Helena to Grenada - Day 19

Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Thu 31 Jan 2013 15:15
08:31.416N  50:59.391W
 
January 31, 2013
 
Countdown.
Now that conditions have returned to pleasant tradewind sailing (aside from the continuously gray sky above us), we can move on to more important topics.  Like counting things.  We always start calculating arrival time as the end of a passage nears, however, this exceptionally long passage calls for a broader approach to the usual countdown.  What follows are some of the things we are keeping track of as Grenada draws near.
 
Alcoholic beverage tally:  Don - 3 beers, Anne - 0  Our successful passage prohibition program proves we can exhibit extraordinary willpower when we choose to.  It also proves that a long sailing passage without alcohol could easily be packaged and sold as an excellent weight loss program.
 
Total dead flying fish - Hmmmm....not sure, but if you include the two from last night, we must be well up over 100 by now.
 
Total fish caught - 1 35 pound king mackerel (thrown back) and two grayish, smallish UFO's (Unidentified Fish Objects) also thrown back.  After that, fishing was suspended due to freezer malfunction.
 
Number of battery charging cycles left - 8 (2 per day).  The generator (knock on wood) continues to chug along and the two working battery chargers are doing the job.
 
Liters of water in the tank - 600.  Don suspects the watermaker's high pressure pump is in need of some TLC, and this is why the fresh water salinity content is up and the watermaker volume down.  No worries though, we've been mixing bottled water with tank water for drinking, and 600 liters is enough to last us several weeks, let alone four days.
 
Liters of diesel on board - tons.  We still have a few jerry cans full of fuel, and haven't checked the tank level lately because it's not a concern.  We've only run the engine 38 hours since leaving St. Helena, and although the generator has gotten plenty of use, its fuel consumption is minimal.
 
Card-playing champion - Unofficially, it's Don (but I don't like to admit it).  Tea time and card playing (when conditions allow) have been our substitute for happy hour, and have worked out quite nicely (other than the Don winning thing).
 
Books - Don is on book 9 or 10, I lag behind at book 4 (the change in boat motion north of the equator and the bad weather are to blame).
 
Night watches left - Eight 3-hour watches for each of us.
 
Remaining dinners to be prepared while simultaneously bouncing and leaning to the left - four.
 
And the finale...
Vegetables remaining after 3 weeks at sea and 5 weeks since our last visit to a 'real' grocery store in Namibia:
5 surly onions who continue to sneer up at us from their basket on the galley counter.
1 bag of carrots sitting in the back corner of the back-up fridge untouched and uncared-for.  You could say the cook is afraid to look in that particular bag - afraid of finding a remarkable collection of orange mush threaded with black ooze and white stringy mold.
1 partial, continuously bending, cucumber.
10 very well looked after St. Helena green beans - like the cucumber, extremely flexible; but unlike the tomatoes, have not succumbed to the weeping black death.
1 extremely perky half cabbage.
2 pleasantly healthy oranges.
5 semi-bruised, but still edible, apples. 
1 dozen age-spotted eggs.
With that vast collection of appetizing tidbits to keep us going, we are sure to arrive in Grenada four days from now in tip-top shape and vigorous health.
 
670 miles to go.
(Day 19 progress: 183 miles)
Anne