Location: The Mediterranean Sea
Howdy peeps! Welcome back to today’s blog! Today, for me and watch team three, our day started at the not-so-bright but early hour of 3:30 am. 4-8 watch! WoHOOOO, my favorite watch! Something kind of funny about the 4-8, now that we’re in the Med compared to out in the Atlantic, is that the sun rises WAY later. There were some watches during our crossing that you could start to see the light during the turnover of watches between the 12-4 am and the 4-8 am watch. Today, though, after all making bets on when we would see the full orb of the sun, the sun decided to make her entrance at 7:11 am.
We started sailing yesterday afternoon, as I’m sure you already know from Shelb’s blog… sailing is a strong word for what was happening on our watch last night. Some would call it much more of a drift. On our starboard side, there was a small series of islands with a lighthouse on the biggest one. When I came up for the watch, Dan gave me a quick brief, which included the fact that they had been a beam to that lighthouse for the entirety of their watch. After our float day a couple of weeks ago, I’ve become very fond of the days we just drift in the middle of nowhere, going 1 knot an hour. For the remainder of watch team three’s 4-8 am watch, we also were abeam that lighthouse.
After watching and a second sleep, I woke up in my bed a little… chilly? I look out my window and see that the ocean is moving past us a lot quicker than it was before I went to bed. I thought, “This is very odd. The motor isn’t on. WHAT IS HAPPENING?!?”” We were SAILING!!!!! But not just sailing with our typical sails up. The Fisherman was up! This is only the second time on this program that we’ve been able to put the fish up, so it’s safe to say I was stocked. We were sailing 5,6. We may have even touched 7 knots!
We spent the rest of the day tacking around and just sailing off the coast of Spain because… well… we can! Our dock reservation for Tarragonaisn’tt until tomorrow so we literally had nothing better to do. It was epic! Sailing close-hauled is also just the best way to sail if you ask me. Easy breezin!
Our head chef today was Lucie, and Lucie never fails to bring a delicious meal to the cockpit. For dinner tonight, she made her very own recipe of chickpea coco curry, a combination of heaps of chickpeas, spinach, coconut milk, and spices (Mom and Dad, you would love it). Miss Zo Zo was our bread maker today, and per our head chef’s request, Zo made Naan bread!
After dinner and many tacks and attempts to keep this beautiful sailing going all the way to Tarragona, Tom ultimately decided that it was time for us to drop the sails and throw the motor back on (insert sad face). The whole crew came together to center line, drop, and flake five of our six sails up. We did it in record time! We were all very impressed with ourselves and our teamwork in getting everything down and ready to head into Tarragona.
At this point, as I look at the screen on my right, I can see that we should be arriving in Tarragona in about 8 hours. This is our last somewhat big passage of the whole program, so tonight is a bit bittersweet. I think everyone is very excited to see and explore Tarragona and Barcelona, though!
That was today! To all of our sweet little 50-day friends, WE MISS YOU!!! To my family back home, I miss you all and love you A LOT!! Talk to you tomorrow!
-EG