The wind is still holding - knock on wood, cross our fingers... we are cooking along SOG : 7 kts COG : 103°, mostly cloudless sky, sea 0.5m. Esa is back in the kitchen making bread and rummaging around with his ipod on, Jorgen is asleep hidden behind the lee cloth, and Juha is at the wheel in an orange jacket, orange sun glasses and green cap, drinking out of a green army canteen, both hands on the wheel. There are two kinds of helms people, the ones that can’t wait to get their hands on it, who keep turning back and forth adjusting compensating... and the ones that can’t wait to get their hands off it, who look for all possible ways to balance the sails, get the wind vane to work, or the autopilot, and then go on to other things when ever possible. Jorgen and Juha are more of the first type, and Esa and i of the second type, though I tend to push the holders to let the boat do its thing and Esa and myself to pay more attention to getting the most out of the situation. There is also an attitude question - I am always racing even when I’m not, which means that I want to go as fast as is safe at all times even when cruising. Others make the distinction between racing and cruising. As the skipper is a nut for speed and perfection, the trip has that style. We met lots of boats in Horta and Trinidad, and even out here on the VHF that are content to just sail along peacefully. While we are changing sails, adjusting halyards, moving ballast around, they are listening to music in the cockpit reading books, doing watercolors, yakking with their friends on the SSB. We met boats that have taken twice the time we did. It is a life style. Talking about shopping for food. Esa worked it out and Juha helped him shop and stow. We all cook, Jorgen rarely. The shopping was done on the principle of cooking improvisation with a large range of staples. This has been great because we have a lot of variety and never eat the same thing twice. But it means a lot of work for the cook. For people like Jorgen who don’t cook it is a pain in the ass. For my next trip I will be more inquiring about what crew kitchen capacities are and adjust the shopping list to include as much prepared meals as are non cooks on board. Having good cooks on board is definitely a plus - I would never sail without at least one. Esa shopped for about 50% more then my crossing calculations which are always pessimistic by about 20% so we have found that we are not lacking in anyway, better this way than the contrary. Getting fresh vegetables that are really fresh has been a problem, so stuff is not keeping for as along as it should - all the tomatoes from Horta went bad in 3 days, as did a lot of fruit. This is the hardest part of the trip for us, we are close to home, miss you all, we’re a bit tired, we did the blast and fast crossing from Trinidad to Horta in record time, this might seem like just the rest... but we are still out here sailing our asses off and till we hit Perpignan we are at sea... so keep the mail coming, xxxxxx p
