My chores for the afternoon were to clean out the forward galley cupboards and to bake some bread since we had just finished the last of the bread that we had purchased at Costco back in San Diego.
The previous night I had noticed a line of material running along the back edge of the aft galley cupboard. It was either capers that had escaped from the jar or we had been invaded by a mutant version of the Andromeda Strain version of a Creighton novel sequel. Fortunately it was just capers and the cleaning process allowed me to become reacquaint with everything that was stored in the cupboard. My find of the effort was a nearly full 500g jar of Vegemite. I proudly showed it to Arnold telling him that there was plenty there and he could help himself to as much as he wanted. He made a face and said that he would stick with the peanut butter and I could have the Vegemite all to myself. I said fine, but I'd be healthier than he would be. ... Some people just don't have the appreciation for the really good things of life such as good old Aussie Vegemite.
I dug out the flour for the baking found that the bottom of the bag had been exposed to moisture and was a bit moldy. That and the fact that the flour dated to Tahiti did not deter me. I dug out the small amount of moldy flour and used the rest, making an effort to sift and aerate it with a fork. While kneading the dough I hoped that Arnold would not recall where my hands had been two days previously when working with the plumbing. Then while the loaf was baking I realized that I had forgotten to add sugar to the mix. However, the loaf rose well and look good enough to prompt Arnold to take a photograph. The bread tasted fine without the sugar, a wonderful contrast to American breads which tend to be laced with sugar. (I wonder how many cases of diabetes would be prevented if all US food makers agreed to stop or at least moderate their surreptitious use of sugar and other sweeteners in their products.)
We rocketed into the night doing 7 knots. Our noon to noon distance the previous day had been 117 miles. At this rate we would easily crack 120 miles, the equivalent of 2 degrees of latitude.
At dusk we discussed a string of rain clouds on the western horizon and decided to put a second reef in the mainsail and roll in the jib to a no. 3. This proved to be a good move not just because it prepared us for any squalls that might it us during the night but also because the boat just sailed better - less yawing and agitation, less weather helm, and the loss of maybe half a knot of speed.
Arnold watched me cook spaghetti. I was ashamed to reveal how easy it is: while the water heats chop up an onion and throw it in the water. When the water is boiling get a big handful of thin spaghetti, break it in half, then put it into the water using a fork to make sure that the spaghetti strands stay separate. While that is simmering set the table and lay on the Parmesan cheese. Put the colander in the sink. When the spaghetti is ready (a little andante) empty the pot into the colander then thrown the spaghetti minus the water back into the pot. Pour a little - well, a lot actually - olive oil into the spaghetti, throw in about 100 ml of Paul Newman sauce, and stir it up. Tonight we opened up can of olives and threw some of them in too. It wasn't bad. We have found that heated corned beef goes well with it when we are really hungry.
I was up shortly before midnight to have another go at capturing some weather faxes and to take over the watch. Arnold was unhappy with our SSE course which was close to tangential to Cabo San Lucas, since the Baja coast falls away to the SE. We were 165 miles off the coast but at least we were beyond the shipping lane. After much discussion and some calculations we decided to wear ship (gybe) with the same sail plan. The results were better than I had calculated and we found ourselves only 15 degrees off the rhumb line to Cabo San Lucas. (We had discussed dropping the mainsail and running with jib only to give us a better angle of sail but I wanted to avoid that because Jeff might have trouble dealing with the unbalanced sail plan.)
The weather faxes were very clear and showed us to be under the influence of a stationary high for the next 40 hours. The prospects were for winds to reach up to 20 knots and veer to the north, giving us a better lay to Cabo San Lucas.
At midnight we were past the half way mark to Cabo San Lucas.
As noon approached we were running directly for Cabo San Lucas at around 6 knots. Given that the boat was running fast and comfortable we saw no need to change sail plan of double reefed main and no. 3 jib, particularly since we were expecting 20 knot winds in the coming night.
At noon we were at 25N25,114W24, 122 miles from the coast and 290 miles from the tip of the Baja California peninsula which is near Cabo San Lucas. We had made good a noon to noon distance of 112 miles. We had actually covered more ground but our hours running SSW had cost us distance made good.
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1 comment:
You were fortunate it was green rather than a red version spilt in your cupboard!!!!!!!!!!
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