Today. Last day before the passage. Rental car returned. Last provision purchased. Last shower had by all. Last dollar spent at a West Marine for some time. Last hour spent trying to make room for all of our junk and our crew. Last time I have to cook: tonight. Maybe not! All the Veggies on the boat are washed and cut. Lettuce washed. Steaks and fish ready. Maybe the first mate will stay long enough at the bar, getting away from the testosterone, (which has been beyond tolerable) and having a minute to herself for a change (not having same is challenging), that some one else will take the incentive to cook! Last night, the first mate had a huge meal prepped then the crew got hungry while she was doing a huge laundry: the crew left and ate their second meal of fried food of the day in the yacht club resto. The captain and the first mate were just finishing a much yummier meal when they came home. I got them to commit to eating with us tonight before not sending their steaks in for freezing!
The freezer came late friday and then the crew came saturday and the three men set right to work building a box to install it. And the first mate set right to work buying a huge amount of food for several days and cooking it. Enough meals for the entire passage. Chili, Stew, Southern style catfish, Curried chicken, Thai green curried shrimp, West indian curried chickpeas and kale, to which a can of chick peas can be added when the time comes to eat it: not going to waste good freezer space with canned food, although it seemed like so there was so much I added beans and corn to the chili. I think there are about 9 different dishes in the freezer. We'll have to have repeats but we'll not be cooking in rough seas with a seasick first mate!
We had so much freezer space, the first mate bought a lot of fresh fish and meat. You can buy good chicken and pork in the caribbean, but beef and fish, not so much. Brian took two 2 gallon ziplocks of individually packaged meat and fish to the yacht club restaurant and they just asked: fridge or freezer? and if I'd thought of that I would've sent in everything I cooked for the last three days in to get frozen. Once our freezer has got everything frozen it'll take a lot less power to keep it frozen. Anyway, Brian eats a paleontology diet, so he'll not starve. Only one pasta dish, and he brought protein powder, so he can eat our food rather than resorting to the 12 cans of chicken and 30 cans of tuna we purchased to assuage our anxiety about his starvation. Ironically, he is more worried about dying from dehydration. We have filled the very shallow bilges with bottles of water.
The good news is that Brian is nothing but gushing with appreciation about all of the preparations that we have done to ensure comfort and safety. And just this minute Charles has joined me in the bar and expressed surprise that the first mate has been so prepared, but this is silly, as Petty packed his bag a week before he left. He went so far as to say he would stop her from doing all the cooking, which sent the first mate into a fit of loud swearing protests. Sorry to the other patrons of this bar. But, the chief safety officer (ie., the first mate and primary blogger) and captain do acknowledge and accept the recognition from the crew that we have really worked hard to ensure that our small boat is a safe haven: we are accountable to our crew and to their spouses. Anyway, sorry about the resolution of the photos, but Charles, the computer guru, has been trying to help me without success so far.
The crew have been very busy for days while the first mate was foraging and provisioning. They have decommissioned the dinghy, stored and re-stored and gone through every belonging we have to ensure it is essential, got all our electronics hooked up and running, filled up the jerry cans with diesel and water and secured them. Today, we all hoisted the storm sail and the first mate labelled all the parts with a Sharpie, in preparation for crisis mode. To this day, the first mate only uses the sailorly terms infrequently. There is a tack, a head, and a clew. The first mate wrote: tack this to the furling, attach this clew to the jib sheet, and head: attach to spare halyard. These could be all mixed up, given that there is not a place in my brain that keeps this information permanently. And, when we are in rough winds and seas are spilling onto our backs and we are trying to unfold the storm sail, trying not to lose the sail bag overseas, while attaching the chafe protection to our big metal clew, we don't have to think too much about which end is which. I think this is smart.
| Testosterone on Volver: not too untidy, despite the circumstances |
All the safety equipment has been reviewed, single line reefing reviewed, jack lines laid, man overboard protocol for the new chartplotter, etc. We are going to learn from others and leave the tethers on board and move between them, as we have enough.
The weather. So as you might have surmised, we are leaving two days later than the predicted starting date, of Nov 4. And we are leaving on the official starting date of the Salty Dawg Rally, Nov 6. We are good with this. Our Toronto Hansians, Unknown Island, and Happy Chaos, have left today and we wish them safe passage. There have been some fronts, and the Caribbean 1500 people left saturday night and they are quite unhappy: being pounded apparently. If we had alot of pounds of boat and a lot of engine and a lot of fuel, we could leave any time. But we have none of those things. We are leaving with the fleet, when Chris Parker, the weather guru, recommends we leave. And we are good with this. He is a fair weather sailor with a 34 foot boat, and we are the same with a little bigger boat. Since our freezer came 2 days late we were delayed anyway, and we had a lot of tasks to do. We could have washed the boat! But the crew rebelled at that. The captain is pacing back and forth, wishing for something to do; not being used to idleness, as we have been in a constant state of frenzy. There will be a bit of a squall in 2 days time, but should not be much more than thirty n.m. on the beam and we will be fine with that. Lots of reefing available. We are leaving connection: soon to be just about wind, waves, course, logging, reporting, survival. Sat phone: contact us
we have PLB, which is essentially an Epirb, as the Canadian Coast guard has all our detes
follow us on our SPOT on www.saltydawgrally.org
Love to all of our loved ones and thank you for your love over the years.
our SPOT is working. We are going to arrive alive and well, not to mention, well fed.
SV Volver
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