Just got off the phone with my new friend Sean from Newfoundland. He's a talented young chap, though I sincerely hope he's being paid by the hour as we just spent 4 hours on the phone listening to one another breathe. There was an occasional "click such-and-such button", of course, but we spent enough time clearing our throats, humming and listening to background noise to have written a new language that anyone would be jealous of. Needless to say, there's no reason to complain -- we've got our internet back, and I have a new friend! Oh, how one gets lonely on a boat.
It's been quite a ride since we spoke last. Some days at sea go without mentioning. Others, you live moments you'd never in your wildest dreams have imagined you'd be living (and we've all been having really wild dreams!). Many of our days have been "at work" (what a joke, I know). While the guys rewired the solar panels and fashioned them to port, cooked, cleaned, and manned the helm, I sat for 5 days straight taping, stitching, and burning 'Blue Lightening' back to life. Given the decorative blue patch it's received, we could think of little name more befitting. And then most days are just silliness. It's been duly noted onboard that the wind comes and goes when Bill does, so we try and time his naps accordingly. We watched hundreds of porpoise encircle dinner and the aerial acrobatics of tuna's futile attempts to escape. We entertained a frigate bird that was keen on a free ride but rejected a pickle. We've also successfully made a game out of how quickly we can search the freezer, created new 3am exercise routines and practiced tying the turks head.
Or we've slept.
Ed has been trying out various night shift equations to assimilate our bodies better into waking at all hours of the night. Given our estimated arrival in Nuku Hiva (12/11 -- if all works out), we may leave Bill fending for himself in the Marquesas so as to not miss holiday plans with his family. Ed and I then would carry out the remaining 750 nautical miles alone. You know what that means for night shifts? Tricky maneuvering. So we've been experimenting with 4.5 hour shifts while the third of us gets a night to rest, or party -- though partying, it seems, turns out to be struggling to stay up until 9 and passing out.
As of the 28th, we made it within the bounds of everyone's charted, predicted, reliable calculations of where the doldrums grace the earth. For whatever reason, we've outsmarted those poor suckers. There was nothing 'dol' about it. Drummy, however, seemed to fit amazingly. If you could envision a large drum, place our grain of rice in the center, and have five of your friends whack the shit out of it on all sides, you'd have a better idea of where we were for 40+ hours. It's as if the wind and waves shifted so we might readjust to a new evolution in sea sickness. With it came Bill's neverending great watery deluge -- laying out in his bunk, hatch open, staring wide-eyed as the phosphorescence cascaded down on him!! It was a comfort then, as you can imagine, that each time we gazed out into the horizon, we knew that it was only about time that someone's arm would cramp playing their side of the instrument and we'd get a break from this gut-clentching madness. Little did we expect that in taking on optimism, we were envisioning being 'somewhere over the rainbow'.
People made mention to the habit of the mind to get cloudy and confused -- crazy even -- at this leg of our crossing. I don't know what the following confirms.
For some time now, Ed has had this vision each time he looks at the clouds: Don's floating face, smiling down on us. When Don reminded us the gennaker's a light wind sail, we could all see him there -- same smile, happily shaking his finger at us. When we'd ask for a weather report, he kept encouraging us that a calm easterly was on its way. We'd receive quotes -- site verse 11:27 am, "Point higher, rhumb line 200". We waited and waited, got ill, and waited; it didn't show. And we kept dreaming of our 'over the rainbow'. Then the pieces came together and it hit us! We weren't dealing with Don, oh no, but the great and powerful Doz! As we laughed contentedly, Doz behind the cloudy curtain, we deemed the ol' girl Dorothy and set out trying to decided which of the three of us was Scarecrow, Tinman, and Lion. Bill suggested we had so many other virtuous qualities lacking a brain, heart, and courage that we might as well not linger on the obvious. When that gentle easterly started blowing, Doz was telling us he told us so, and we knew that even if we felt before like he'd deceived us, he was always right! So here we float, encouraging Dorothy to keep the wind in her sails when she strays, biking merrily along the yellow brick road.
Trade winds here we come! I'm going to go work on my winter tan. Hope you're all well and staying more sane than we are.
With all our love,
The crew of L'Obsession
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