Panama to Galpagos

Wandering Dream
Steve Litson
Wed 1 Apr 2015 16:45
03:15:2N 081:24:6W
 
Wednesday 1st April 2015
 
New Transport and Exercise
Is this a first?  During the short period we were becalmed yesterday, the crew’s ingenuity came to life.  We retrieved one of the folding bikes and rigged it with six fenders for buoyancy and after a short trial run, we achieved propulsion with flippers attached to the rear wheel.  A line was attached.  Ken was chosen as the lightest and a keen cyclist.  With life jacket donned and after two capsizes, he managed to mount the bike. With a few adjustments he was able to propel himself the length of the boat.  First of April.
 
The Tennis Podcast by Catherine Whitaker
Yesterday’s pre-dinner entertainment included the crew of WD listening avidly to Catherine’s dulcet “The Tennis Podcast”, relayed over the cockpit speakers.  We look forward with keen anticipation to the next broadcast.  The discussion of tennis players careers possibly being over at thirty three years, severely depressed the skipper who’s tennis career is yet to begin.
 
Musings – by Ken
It is three am on our third night on the sea after leaving Panama. Steve and I share a cup of tea before he turns in and I take the watch.  The wind and currents have been kind to us and progress is steady.  Progress on this journey, under sail, takes on a different meaning.  We are not in a hurry, yet look forward to good sailing speed as it simply feels good, and the boat responds well to travelling at pace.  The moon, a light golden globe in the western sky is setting beneath a cloud bank and is now gone.  Is weather coming our way?  Earlier this evening we marked our track between the southern cross and the polestar, a vestige of many passages and voyagers before us.  Progressing toward the equator by sail brings on a new significance to something done so often and without a second thought at 40,000 feet.  What is it about the sea that prompts us to write, to explore the space in the middle distance, between ourselves and the actual experience?  Perhaps here, words are our only canvas of _expression_, and like a good point of wind, it takes us somewhere, and it feels good.
 
Perhaps tomorrow will be a better day for fishing. Small fish eat plankton and bigger fish eat smaller ones.  The last few evenings have shown only a few sparkles of photo-plankton. Tonight there are clouds of them, so bright they light the stern of the boat.  The clouds of little stars are mesmerizing, and give a sign that we are once again in a living sea.
 
The rhythm of night watches changes your whole sense of time, breaks you from the pattern you thought was normal and real.  Sleep becomes a series of transition bridges.  Our members of crew pass to their bunks or up to their watch, reminding one of a continuous set of transitions and movement.  Yet the days bring us all together on deck bringing a sense of that former normality. 
 
I now faint tones of light toward the east, signalling the end of my watch.  Robert will be showing his head through the hatch in a few minutes with a smile that will light up and be evident in the faint light of pre dawn.
 
Miles travelled in the last 24 hours: 139
Miles to go: 525