Day 3: Quoting the Greats

So we're keepin' on, movin' on. I just said to Windy that when we're all below, eating or whatever, it's easy to forget that we're moving, easy to imagine we're at anchor and to attribute the easy motion to wind and passing pangas.

The wind that keeps us moving has been light and variable the past 24 hours. I rolled up the jib this morning and hauled the code zero back up. We mostly move along between 3 and 4 knots, but we'll get 10 minute periods every once and a while where the wind just ceases and we bang and rattle for that time before it freshens again. The seas are mellow; we just move up and down big ocean swells.

For weeks before we left, the girls hatched a plan to buy a whole mess of jelly beans, to organize them in some fashion, and to then count out the passage days by eating them systematically. Unfortunately for them, they couldn't source the necessary beans anyplace. Of course, this left their need to mark the passage days unfulfilled.

Frances made a calendar and has carefully marked off each day since we left La Paz. Eleanor found famous quotes online, handwrote her favorite 30 onto strips of paper, and stuffed them into a ditty bag. We didn't know about any of this until our first morning after leaving La Paz when she announced her plan. "Every day one of us will reach in and pull out a quote and read it aloud. I'll tape them onto my wall so we have a record of the days." It's been great. Each quote has prompted interesting conversation, either about the author or the content.

Windy tossed a rotting cantaloupe overboard this afternoon. She said she's going to start checking every piece of produce daily. The pears and tomatoes all ripened quickly; they're now at the top of our menu. Even though this is only our third day out of Cabo, we bought all our perishables in La Paz, 6 days ago.

The days out here are wonderfully pleasant. The nights are still cold since Cabo; I'll sit in the cockpit with my foul weather jacket on and a fleece blanket on my lap. I think in the next few days it's going to start getting hot and sticky.

We're all really enjoying this, just hanging out together-cooking, talking, teaching-or each just doing our own thing.

--MR

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