Confessions of a calendar girl: The Crossing

Confessions of a calendar girl

Leslie:
If Andy and Lisa's rollicking tales of life at sea weren't enough to make you quit your job and stowaway on the first boat you see, here are the Pacific crossing highlights from Aldebbie's social calendar.

May 20- San Jose to cabo, cabo passage; scary windy swelly
After fixing our leaky water tank in San Jose, we anger the fuel dock guys at cabo by sitting there for 3 hours while we run off on last minute errands. Oh well, we paid for fuel and water, calmete hombres!
Right out of the gate, mid-pop from the Henkell champagne bottle, we are met with nasty weather. Andy, Carl and Leslie begin to turn a nice shade of sea green. Family "iron stomach" Fierro have no problems. 

May 21- lovely day
Although maybe not according to Andy's tummy.

May 22- overcast rolly, but nice
This passage business ain't so bad! Although at some point in the night/morning we bust a shackle on the preventer, but it's an easy fix for Don. "Guys, don't over-tighten the preventer! What's your heading?"

May 23- overcast, ripped a sail
Ripped a reef point on the main (a reef is a way of making the main sail smaller when you have a lot of wind). Andy and I spend about 4 hours passing a needle back and forth through the thick sail, sail tape and patch. It's not so pretty, but it works!

May 24- banana muffins
Banana coconut chocolate muffins, to be precise! Mmm! Lisa wins for best galley slave ever! 

May 25- Raleigh's pee and poo explosion!
Raleigh's first experience on an overnight watch, and a rolly, windy one at that! He was too scared and too desperate to make it to the bow, so he used our foot towels as a last resort. He was very ashamed of himself, but he soon got into the daily habit of constituting himself on the bow, with moral support from carl! 

May 26- Grodnick
This is what we call our jenniker sail, because though it seems nothing more than a beautiful, light and airy bit of balloon, it's really going places, just like carl!

May 27- carl gets a tuna!
A ten pound yellowtail, delicious sushi right off the freshly slain corpse, but even better seared as tuna steaks with wasabi, soy and an asiany slaw!

May 28- olive oil bread
Lisa taught me and Andy how to make this versatile and delicious bread recipe, though Andy cannot stomach the galley during passage, so lee and I alternate making bread every day for the ravenous beast-boys, who act like a day without bread would destroy them! 

May 29- still motoring going rolling along
No wind affects the crew's sanity and sentence structure.

May 30- hot hot hot
It was hot!

May 31- bird on the mast
A booby stayed on our mast for a few days, pooping on our Grodnick, which made the other Grodnick mad  and wish for an air rifle. Lee and don named the booby "Titswiggle" because they are 10 years old. 

June 1- another fish! Totally legit fish! Big!
This 20 pound, blue-hued beauty may have maybe perhaps kind of been on the no-no species  list, though carl squinted and swore the fin had a little yellow in it! At any rate, he tasted marvelous filleted and served with coconut rice. Later that night, bioluminescent dolphins congratulated us with an amazing laser light show around the bow! 

June 2- rain
Rain on our parade, a gloomy day and a wet dinner of sadsacks and yummy leftovers. 

June 3- sun
Hooray.

June 4- whale
50 yards off. I didn't see it. Are we there yet?

June 5- equator day 0* 129*
Woke up at midnight to take a group photo. What a mess!

June 6- champagne + dunks + haircuts = shellbacks! 
More Henkell champ, jumps in the sea after we hove to, Raleigh dunked, hairs snipped! Don and Andy finally shave those horrific beards!

June 7- waves!
Big ones! Nothing Debbie can't handle though. 

June 8- foccacia! Mmm!
The same bread recipe as the olive oil bread, with sundried tomatoes, parsley, pepper, basil and thyme.

June 9- fat lip bread! 
The humidity makes the bread rise quick and pout over the side of the pan. Still delicious though. 

June 10- one more night!
The rock'n n rolliest yet! We get there a bit earlier, so we head the wrong way for an hour and then turn around so we'll get there at first light. 

June 11- Marquesas Eureka!
It's raining but nobody cares! We muscle our way into a fairly crowded anchorage at tahuata bay on hiva ou, and put up our tarps as a full rainbow stretches itself like a Cheshire grin across the breakwater. In town, which is only like 3 blocks long, we buy baguettes and orangina, then walk to gauguin's grave. It smells like fruit and flowers everywhere.

If the passage sounds like a relative walk in park, here is a word cloud of notes from our overnight logbook to add another dimension of mood:

Vomit feel like vomit no vomit need sleep slam! Slammy stupid wind why why? Just get to 270*! engine started wind sucks sailing this way sux Line islands or bust genniker line chaffing effed up Ghost whale wind light and shifty can't find headlamp This sux as mutter I love trivial pursuit nice sunrise gps speed f**ked fuel gauge broke storm sail reefed let out reef more right, less left midnight cowboy was x-rated? Wind freckle swell annoy slower slammier ruff as bro big splashier waves lots of spray land! 


(pictures to come someday when we get our act together!)