Day 7: Our Days

The days pass swiftly out here, surprisingly. Here's a glimpse of how they tend to go by.

About 1 hour after sunset, Windy and the girls are ready for bed and all pile into either the v-berth or Frances's aft stateroom berth. Windy reads aloud for about 20 minutes and then it's lights out for them. The only light below is a red light in the main cabin. I can see its glow from where I sit in the cockpit.

I hang out in the cockpit by myself for the next 5-7 hours. Mostly I just recline with the iPod, listening to music or This American Life podcasts. But I also go below to use the head or check our course on the iPad or grab a snack. Around 3:00 a.m., I wake Windy.

"Is it time?" she always asks.

"Yep."

She heads straight for the stove to prepare coffee for herself and I strip down and climb into the warm spot she's left.
_
I don't know much about what happens over the next few hours, but when I wake around 9:00 or 10:00 a.m., Windy and the girls have eaten breakfast and are playing a card game or doing schoolwork or something.

I'll make myself a snack and then look for something to do, maybe put away the dishes Eleanor washed and left to dry or fix something broken, such as Frances's fan. Around noon I'll make a lunch for everyone.

Windy is in bed reading herself to sleep very soon after she takes her last bite. The girls and I hang until she wakes a couple hours later. An hour or so after she rises, I'll crash and take an afternoon nap. When I get up, it's time to start making dinner. When dinner is over, Windy gets on the radio to check in and check email and send this blog post. Eleanor does the dishes. One or more of us watch the sunset. We all clean up. Then Windy rallies the girls into bed for reading time and I climb up into the cockpit with the iPod.

Today was the exception to that schedule. We noticed a strip of UV cloth coming off the bottom of our jib and wrestled the thing down, brought it below, dug out the sewing machine, broke all three needles for that machine trying to go through too many layers of cloth, and then spent 3 hours hand stitching 8 linear feet before raising the sail again. Windy had half a nap, I had none--the night is beginning. We have plenty of Coca-Cola and coffee aboard.

--MR

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