agility @ sea

Jer:

This morning I had the pleasure of watching the sunrise above a small atoll and then the surprise of a double rainbow off to the west. I guess it pays to do that 360 look around even without any boat traffic. Ah, nature…

Nearly 24 hours into our passage to Fakarava and all is well. We were initially greeted by decent sized swells so got to bang around a bit to remind us we are at sea, but managed 9-10 knots and swells died down around 8:00 p.m. The wind died soon after causing a painful (for Tim, not so much for me) night of 2-3 knots until finally we were doing 1 knot and Tim could stand it no more and turned the engines on for a couple of hours. Wind freshened up with dawn and we’re averaging around 7 at the moment with very calm seas. Yay! It may be my type of sailing day and we haven’t experienced many of them to date. Several weeks back I was lying in bed while we were beating into it one night and thought “I can’t believe some people do this for fun”. Then I remembered that’s what we’re doing and laughed. Or are we? Sometimes I wonder. At times it feels like more of a character development endeavor. I remind myself I can always use a little more character development.

Diving is supposed to be fantastic in Fakarava and I’m kicking myself for not doing some type of refresher course because it’s relatively deep water. I like to ease into things. In addition, the big attraction is shark viewing and I’m also easing into the S. Pacific shark life. They used to show us horror films in elementary school about the sea. I think it was a ruse to keep us in Iowa. Limb seizure by the moray eel causes me the most concern, but I saw no mention of any of those little devils. We’ll see about the diving. The grocery stores, vegetable stand, and restaurants are 35 miles away on the north part of the island and what I am most interested in, but that will have to wait. The fresh food inventory is down to two pamplemousse, an eggplant, and a radish. I’ve developed an appreciation and admiration for the radish.

It is time for more coffee and contemplation – or not. Cheap detective novel reading sounds pretty good. Then I guess I’ll do my exercise routine.

Have a happy day!