Pacific Ocean 1 April 2010 17.0864N 116.4972W
Well, we dreamed up all kinds of possible April fools day posts: “We made it! with our position in Alaska, narwhal sightings, sea-mounts exploding in front of us into islands; but in the end Frank said April fools jokes only work first thing in the morning – guess you have to get your joke in before Google puts everyone on their toes for other jokes throughout the day – and I was still in yesterday-mode when I posted my last message (first message of today). Besides you’re all too informed to believe me if I said we’d seen a narwhal.
The map feature on the hypercities.com/mo site can’t be looking too interesting right now, just a whole lot of that blue I described (from here on out That Blue). There are sea-mounts ahead and if we weren’t passing by them at night, That Blue might change color a bit to a lighter version of itself, which would be interesting (doesn’t take much to get us excited these days). We’ll have to look for future sea-mounts on our path for that novelty.
Our correspondents have informed us that Clarion is known for it’s birds, it’s a prime tuna spot, and hacer carce, could have meant “are you carsick” in which case they could have been inviting us to stop on by. I did indeed see not one but two tropic birds there (a male and a female in spring no less). And we saw large quantities of tuna off the point. An opportunity missed perhaps, but we did find the trade winds early this morning and are now sailing along wing and wing keeping an eye out for other traders. We’re not exactly in a hurry, but when you see the slow advancement of our markers in the next 20-40 days, you may better understand our eagerness to make way.
I’m feeling a bit bad about saddling all of Mexico with the characteristic of being collective paperwork collectors in yesterday’s post. I should have written “Mexican officials love their paperwork” not just “Mexicans…” I’m sure the average citizens here get as frustrated as the rest of us having to bring every document in triplicate to a minimum of 3 official agencies to get simple things done. So apologies to the rest of Mexico for my unfair generalization. Our own officialdom has found new ways to frustrate it’s citizens despite the paperless office (as anyone who has attempted to fill out an online US government form will attest to). Reframed thus, their desire for official looking documents is almost an endearing quality (almost).
Logan just hollered from the cockpit that he saw an “Armada of flying fish.” His new goal is to get hit in the face by a flying fish, I guess he figures that would be something worth writing home about. We’ve been seeing a lot more flyng fish, so he may yet achieve that goal. As you can see our attempts to teach them to be goal oriented is working!
The trades came just in time, we got something caught in the propellor last night (yes my watch, but you can’t exactly see very well at night…when you’re busy composing emails…) Likely a fishing line, or a large plastic bag; if this thing is similar to things we’ve gotten caught in props in the past. The solution is to dive and take a look, but now that we have wind we get to wait for calmer seas which will likely be when we have warmer water…somewhere near the equator. We still have some maneuverability in an emergency, but using it now would just wrap whatever it is tighter, making a tougher job for our diver (I hope we’re not drawing straws for that task – as managing owner of this vessel, I do get to overrule some of the captain’s decisions).
With the coming of the wind we lost our sunshine, you win some and you loose some. The sky is full of big overlapping puffy clouds that block out all of the sky’s blue. That Blue still follows directly adjacent to the boat, but the rest of the ocean has taken on a steely gray look.
xoxomo