Location: Underway to San Blas
As I write this, it’s satisfying to see that all of our hard work today has paid off – we’re underway to San Blas with four sails up and everything onboard Vela neatly lashed and ratcheted down in anticipation of the seas ahead. We started the morning with Morgan C’s French toast and then immediately started passage prep. This involved storing all of our dive gear back in the laz. This was a really entertaining job, and I may have made a mistake asking Harry to help me out in the deepest part of the laz. He very quickly became stuck and was contorted like a pretzel, holding a tank with no hope of getting it into its rack. Fortunately, he was able to get un-twisted, and Paloma offered to switch spots with him, helping Henry and I lash all of the tanks in their places. Another big job was re-rigging the sails that we had sent out for repairs – the main staysail, the forward staysail, and the flying jib. Big thanks to Jake, Maisy, Morgan C, Morgan G, Paloma, Jay, and Graham for doing some heavy lifting on that. By mid-afternoon, we were off the dock and starting to raise sails. Harrison, Henry, Paloma, and Morgan C put them all into sweating up the main sail halyard, and the rest of the sails followed. We’re sailing on a deep, broad reach now, so our three boom sails are prevented out, and everyone is getting used to helming through the bigger swells. While most of the crew finished up sail handling, James, Maya L., and Morgan C. braved the galley to chef up a dinner of burgers and fries. Now we’re just settling into the watch schedule and looking forward to the passage ahead, and our arrival to San Blas!