11/15
Today we're at 15 degrees north, 102 degrees west, 150 miles off the coast of Acapulco. Half-way, with 70 hours on the engine.
There’s a “whole lotta nothin’” going on out here for the most part, punctuated now and again by the smallest event, which we turn into excitement. A piece of flotsam (or jetsom?) passing by causes us to run for our binoculars to identify and classify it, as if we’re a couple of garbage-ologists.
We just spotted the first ship we’ve seen in a week – a car-carrier. Right on time, as we pass over the “Balboa to Honolulu” shipping line on the chart. We called them on the VHF radio, just as we had the last ship, but no one was home, I guess. Ships have answered us after a 10-minute pause, apparently after sending a runner to find an English-speaking crewmate.
Calling that ship today was just out of curiosity, but one winter in the Atlantic Ocean, on our way from Bermuda to St. Martin, the call was to request a course alteration to avoid a collision. My call that evening consisted of, “Southwest-bound ship, southwest-bound ship, this is the south-bound vessel, Woodwind, on your starboard bow.” I repeated myself several times, anxiously waiting, until a French-accented voice came back to us with, “Sailing vessel, Woodwind, this is the southwest-bound ship. Do you need assistance?”
I answered, “Sir, we do not need assistance but we would like you to alter course.”
“No problem, madam, we will make the turn to port. Have a good evening.”
Whew!
If this car-carrier, just 12 miles away, had answered us today, we’d have asked for an updated weather report. Just about everything we’ve been getting out here -- winds, sea-state and direction -- is all wrong for this time of year. We’re plotting our course on the same chart we used 11 years ago when we sailed from Costa Rica north to Washington -- a 52-day event. If we’d had these conditions then, we would have made it home before the butter melted.
Everyday the booby birds bring us a diversion. They visit us often out here, showing off their flying finesse as they swoop around the boat, looking for an offering. They are amazingly graceful in the air, but that disappears the instant they pull out those big blue feet and land. Yesterday morning a jet-fighter booby dive-bombed the boat repeatedly before landing on the pilothouse roof, just 2 feet from my head. It stumbled forward, nearly tripping over itself. After a few seconds, it turned and saw me, made a startled squawk and took off. We watched him land in the water just ahead of us, certain it was planning its next attack. But on the way back to our landing craft it took a turn away and landed feet flat out on the water. We couldn’t believe it was standing on the water … and, of course, it wasn’t. It was resting on the back of a large tortoise!
Each time they come to entertain us, I can’t help but think of the “Erin Brockovich” movie line, “They call ’em boobs, Bob.”
There’s a “whole lotta nothin’” going on out here for the most part, punctuated now and again by the smallest event, which we turn into excitement. A piece of flotsam (or jetsom?) passing by causes us to run for our binoculars to identify and classify it, as if we’re a couple of garbage-ologists.
We just spotted the first ship we’ve seen in a week – a car-carrier. Right on time, as we pass over the “Balboa to Honolulu” shipping line on the chart. We called them on the VHF radio, just as we had the last ship, but no one was home, I guess. Ships have answered us after a 10-minute pause, apparently after sending a runner to find an English-speaking crewmate.
Calling that ship today was just out of curiosity, but one winter in the Atlantic Ocean, on our way from Bermuda to St. Martin, the call was to request a course alteration to avoid a collision. My call that evening consisted of, “Southwest-bound ship, southwest-bound ship, this is the south-bound vessel, Woodwind, on your starboard bow.” I repeated myself several times, anxiously waiting, until a French-accented voice came back to us with, “Sailing vessel, Woodwind, this is the southwest-bound ship. Do you need assistance?”
I answered, “Sir, we do not need assistance but we would like you to alter course.”
“No problem, madam, we will make the turn to port. Have a good evening.”
Whew!
If this car-carrier, just 12 miles away, had answered us today, we’d have asked for an updated weather report. Just about everything we’ve been getting out here -- winds, sea-state and direction -- is all wrong for this time of year. We’re plotting our course on the same chart we used 11 years ago when we sailed from Costa Rica north to Washington -- a 52-day event. If we’d had these conditions then, we would have made it home before the butter melted.
Everyday the booby birds bring us a diversion. They visit us often out here, showing off their flying finesse as they swoop around the boat, looking for an offering. They are amazingly graceful in the air, but that disappears the instant they pull out those big blue feet and land. Yesterday morning a jet-fighter booby dive-bombed the boat repeatedly before landing on the pilothouse roof, just 2 feet from my head. It stumbled forward, nearly tripping over itself. After a few seconds, it turned and saw me, made a startled squawk and took off. We watched him land in the water just ahead of us, certain it was planning its next attack. But on the way back to our landing craft it took a turn away and landed feet flat out on the water. We couldn’t believe it was standing on the water … and, of course, it wasn’t. It was resting on the back of a large tortoise!
Each time they come to entertain us, I can’t help but think of the “Erin Brockovich” movie line, “They call ’em boobs, Bob.”
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