South Atlantic: Day 1 Noon Position

Day 1 Noon Position

I’m having a cheerio time being bounced around the ship sleeping in a cave.  Its fun - oddly enough.  My berth is under a double sized though it isn’t as big, its bigger than most.  I have to climb down into it.   It’s a completely different ride than Algalita’s 50’ catamaran I was on last year in the North Pacific.  It’s quieter, but heels a lot more and has much less open space for jumping.  I’ve completed 2700 jumps so far of the 30,050.  The challenge continues if anyone wants to participate www.theplasticocean.org

The sea is too rough for us to sample the first few days, with winds between 18-22 knots and a Sea State around 6. I’m the oldest one on the crew – comforting isn’t it?  But, our young Captain Clive Cosby is not only super human, trained in racing sail ships, and in fact sailed around the world with this very vessel, he is brilliantly funny.   Did I mention the boat I am on has been in the Challenge Race?

Half the crew has fallen ill to the steady rock and “normal” boat smells.  (I won’t go into that)  We’ve traveled 250 nm (nautical miles which are slightly longer miles) since our departure on Sunday at 6pm.  We got a late start waiting for the tide to fill the bay and the fuel to fill our tanks.  It took over an hour to pump around 1800 liters - $3600 worth.

The last night I stayed on the ship solo, readying my cave. Earlier in the day I took one for the team trying to catch the dock before our dingy bounced off it.  I lunged for the dock catching it with my fingertips, pulling the dingy of seven people with white knuckled proved to be unsuccessful and I went face first into the drink. So I decided to stay back, clean and use the bread maker on board.  The captain assured me it was easy.  The list of seven ingredients taped to the inside of the baking supply cabinet door, pen scratched, protected by cellophane.  “You can’t screw it up,” he said in his British italicized words.  “It mixes and bakes itself. Wake up in five hours and it’s done!”

After finally finding everything I needed that wasn’t in baking closet, I shut the lid, push select – 5 hours, “start” then went to bed with a warm and fuzzy thought that we would all wake up to warm “homemade” bread.

I woke up to the early morning sunrise with the captain gently calling my name crouched beside my berth.  “Bunny, look . . . our furst loaf of bread.  It’s going to be our boat mascot,” said chocking off a laugh.  I opened my eyes to a beautifully bronzed loaf of bread about 3 inches tall.   I sat up in shocked! But his giggle viraled mine.  I entered the galley and took a few wise cracks while Anna Cummins found the beauty in it and dared to take a piece.

It wouldn’t be until that night when Captain Clive absolved me when he pulled out his freshly created loaf only to find it was the same size.  Hah!

The moral to the story?  Don’t try to use beer yeast to raise bread, if the label wasn’t written in Portuguese, we might have figured it out.

More later.

Bon


Also, be sure to visit:


5 Gyres blog
Sea Dragon Ships blog


(By the way, "Hi!  I'm Danielle!  I'll be posting everything that Bonnie sends me from the South Atlantic to The Plastic Ocean Project blog.  Should you have any questions or curiosities about the voyage, please comment and I'll be sure to ask Bonnie for you!!)