Day 7. Mid Atlantic
Not much drama to report. With easing winds we’ve slowed enough to finally nab a couple nice Mahi-Mahi, or Dorado as they are called in the Atlantic. A gorgeous fish, both to look at and to eat. The first was caught and on our plates with an asian salad accompaniment within an hour. My kind of sailing.
Now that we’ve entered the true trade-wind belt our skies have changed dramatically. It’s still too cool to get very powerful squalls, but there are rain cells surrounding us by day and by night. Just enough to keep you on your toes, but mostly they are providing a nice kick to the light winds to keep us moving. Our forecast is for continued light airs (9-15 NE) for another couple days, then it looks like we’ll get a bit of welcome pick up. We’re thankful to have made it half way as quickly as we have.
So the crew of Discovery plod along, taking in the horizon, getting plenty of sleep, taking care of our daily chores. It works like this (each day the watch rotates- 3 hours on, 12 hours off- not the most demanding of schedules!): 0600-0900 watch does a wipe down of the glass and stainless; 0900-1200 gives the galley a solid clean, rotates the eggs to keep them from going off, and checks all the veggies to insure there’s no “bad apples” souring the lot; 1200-1500 does a running and standing rigging check (chafe, turnbuckles, pins, shackles, etc.); 1500-1800 bangs out the cockpit and sweeps the floors, prepping Discovery for the night. At night we keep an eye out for ships (we’ve seen one since leaving the African coast), squalls, changes to the weather.
And all the while our girl just cranks along. I don’t believe Discovery has ever been out of Mediterranean waters and I get the feeling she’s enjoying stretching her legs.
Photos courtesy of Tim Collins