Day 11 - Sunrises on Walkabout
Walkabout has gone Sailing
Andrew and Traci Roantree
Sat 22 Apr 2023 16:49
One of the best moments of each day is being up in the cockpit as the darkness gradually lifts with a fresh coffee in hand as the light in the sky slowly builds and eventually the sun appears casting its rays across the ocean and sets you up for a new day.
Another 24 hours on Walkabout and the blue water runner has been pulling us along ever closer to Hiva Oa. We’ve had steady winds of 9-13 knots with the occasional minor squall and higher winds but overall its been a pretty relaxed day. The seas are calmer with half a meter of swell, we’ve seen a few birds flying around in the distance but not much in the way of sea life or fishing for that matter!
The rod and line went back out yesterday after a few changes to lures and traces but nothing is biting at the moment and it seems that is the story across the ARC fleet as no one has landed fish for a few days now. How strange that we had such a high success rate in the early days and now, nothing. Fingers crossed for the second half of the passage as we are looking forward once again to fishy suppers and experimenting with different recipes.
The cooking club menu for yesterday was museli, banana yoghurt and fresh pineapple for breakfast, followed by pate, cheese and ham for lunch and dinner was a winner with, wait for it … sausage and chorizo casserole with SMASH! Who remembers smash? ;) It's an unlikely hot summer dish when sailing the pacific in April but hay, it was delicious.
There is plenty of blue sky this morning with puffy clouds on the horizon so a good day on the solar front we are hoping for. Our battery bank has not reached 100% since the first few days of our passage and so today could be the day when we hit that target once again and become pretty self sufficient. We can then start to use the induction cooker again and we can enjoy toast this morning in the toaster to use up the last of our fresh bread before we make fresh rolls later today or we try ‘Tamlin’s' soda bread recipe! We need butter milk for that and I’m told you can use lemon juice in the milk as a substitute so might give that a whirl later this morning.
Walkabout has looked after us so well but this morning sadly, our fridge and freezer compartment are no longer working so we need to do a big cook up today to avoid losing everything! We have fish, mince, half a chicken and pork loin to use up so no guesses for what we are eating for the next week for breakfast lunch and dinner!?!? That is if the fridge remains cold enough to keep cooked produce cool, as we don’t want any of us to fall sick from food poisoning on my watch!!!
We do have lots of tined fruit and veg and of course the Look What We Found boil in the bag meals as emergencies so no-one will be going hungry :) xx
Tom will be in his element!! The few pounds Tom has lost over the past few weeks will be back on again and his shorts will no longer fall down around his hips. John and B, please don’t misunderstand me, Tom is definatley not wasting away, life on board a boat is limited in the opportunity to build muscle and get a good cardio workout and of course there isn’t the wonderful home cooking he is used to including Bron’s cakes!
Well today we are half way, hard to pinpoint exactly when that is compared to distance sailed or miles as the crow files or whether you measure it in longitude but today is the day when all of those factors will show hat we have less distance ahead of us (not necessarily less time) and so, Hiva Oa here we come!
Thats it for this mornings blog, much to do this morning like sail changes, we might use the boom this morning to ‘pole out’ the port side of the blue water runner to give us a better angle to head more directly to Hiva Oa. We also have a lot of cooking and eating up of our favourite foods like cheese and pate before the fridge completely dies!
Love to everyone
T,A&T xxx