Yes it's true; we are motoring

babelfish
tony zwig
Thu 25 Oct 2007 20:44

26:57.0S

173:12.0E

 

Yes it’s true; we are motoring

Friday at 8am

 

First some facts; Both Thom and Robert seem to have been under the weather with sore and irritable stomachs but report they are on the mend.  Bruce, as usual, feels no pain.

Our meals have included rice and the wahoo we caught, pasta with pesto, pasta and tuna and tomato sauce, and again, breakfast including Bruce’s French toast and tony’s fried eggs.

I think I have been less expansive this leg due in part to my anxiety about the weather.  It seems difficult to get a fix on it; some locals say to start out with a good 3 or 4 days forecast and then hope for the best, and when you are at 30 degrees latitude (about 60% of the way) look at the weather, decide to make a beeline for NZ or divert and stay above 30 degrees latitude until the bad weather, which can be very bad, passes.  So here we are.  It is sort of like everyone raiding a pantry before the big bear returns, only here it is making a mad dash from Fiji 1100 miles to NZ  and hoping to arrive  before the big bear of  a weather system arrives.  Crazy.

We had been sailing on a course that took us west of NZ because of the wind direction.  Last night on one of the single side band nets (SSB) we learned that our neighboring boats were motoring to get  a direct line and to hasten their arrival.  That was good news in one respect because I was wondering why our neighboring C and C 51 was pulling ahead 2 miles each day.  Now we are motoring along with many others.  The wind is down to 12 knots for today so the water is flat and the ride is fine.  We are heading directly for our NZ waypoint and are 450 miles away.  It feels good to be going in the right direction. There is conflicting info about whether the weather will be good or bad when we approach NZ, so I am still a little on edge.

More from Theroux’s Great Railway Bazaar;  In Sri Lanka they dynamite coral reefs,  to burn to make lime.  But the broken reef lets in the sea to erode the shore.  The government is cementing the reefs but the cement needs lime, so more reefs are dynamited to provide lime for cement to repair other reefs.

Also; sightseeing is based on imaginative invention, like rehearsing your own play in stage sets from which all the actors had fled.

And last one; the difference between travel writing and fiction is the difference between recording what the eye sees and discovering what the imagination knows.

 

Last night was another beautiful night; full moon and stars and the familiar lazy swoosh of the water being pushed out from under the leeward side of our  gently rocking vessel with Clapton’s Layla, drowning out the sound of the motor.

SSB nets are informal groups of sailors using this radio to check in at prearranged times to compare notes, weather, and offer company.  We found our best one by accident.  The boat, Mufasa (lion King) heard us talking to someone and called us.  Going to call him in 10 minutes.

babelfish