Life in the middle of the Pacific

Hi everyone,
It's Gudrun here for a change.  Normally I don't have it in me to do a blog update while on 

night watch, as I'm usually anxiously watching "Guy", our beautiful yellow and blue spinnaker 

dancing around the front of the boat, making sure he doesn't get up to any mischief, 

(like collapsing), watching the wind speed and direction and making sure we stay on course.  

I have not yet mastered the art of reading, writing or watching movies on nightshift.  

Tonight is a little different, however, as we are motoring.  The wind died just as the sun 

went down, and so with a motor running, and no sails up, I can focus some of my attention 

on this little screen!

We are starting to lose track of days, as each day tends to be the same as the day before.  

We've noticed that our nights start later, but so do our mornings.  We've probably moved 

into a different time zone,  but we won't change our watches until we get to the Marquesas.  

When I came on deck  at 7 this morning, it was still dark.  The sun only started peeking out

from the horizon at about 7:30am, a far cry from waking up to bright sunlight around 5:00am 

in Panama!

Around this time sleepy bodies start appearing, and the person who has been on the last shift

will usually go back to bed to try and get some rest.  The kettle is boiled and tea and 

coffee are made, cereal and oatmeal prepared.  Our days revolve very much around food!!  

Sometimes Gaby, not yet fully awake, will ask me, "Mommy, what's for dinner?"! At 8:00am 

Dave gets to "call the aliens", his morning check-in on the SSB radio.  Adrian coined this 

phrase due to the static "ring, ring, boing, boing" noise the radio makes!

Since we've run out of fresh bread, my mission has been to bake bread.  This task takes up 

my whole morning!  Prepare, mix, knead, rise, punch down, rise, rollout, put in pan, rise 

again, bake...phew!!!  It's definitely still a work in progress, but I think I produced a 

 half decent loaf today!!  Fresh bread with butter and jam was on the menu for lunch today!

After dishes are washed and put away, thoughts turn to dinner.  No-one was feeling 

particularly creative today, so it was a one-pot rice based meal, but even during dinner we

 were planning tomorrow's meal...We have potatoes...I'll boil them and then fry them...it'll

 be like roast potatoes!  And we have asparagus (in cans)....We could grill them, along with

 a nice piece of fish!  Great!!  Dinner Done!!  Sometimes we'll end up talking about all the

 food we miss:  Ice cream!  Hamburgers and fries!  Milkshakes!  A juicy steak!!  We sound 

like the cast of "Survivor" for goodness sake!!

And then we watch the setting sun and get ready for our evening and nightshift.  And the 

next day we get to do it all over again!  Granted, there may be a bit more to our days than 

this....repairs, trips up the mast, sail changes, reading, playing cards, sleeping, 

reading...and everything of  course depends on the sea state and how roly, rough or calm it 

happens to be.  But all in all, that's life in the middle of the Pacific!



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