Sailing Bear and Seal

Passage from Galapagos, Ecuador to Hiva Oa, Marquesas, French Polynesia

8º52.5′ S/ 131º16.6′ W

Day 19 and I figured it was time for me to show you what I do in a typical day. Mark is very good at taking video of what he has done over the course of this journey, and I’m either laying outside in the cockpit or just chilling in the background. I actually do some things. Some things. Not a lot of things. Just some. But still. I do those things. Sometimes.

After 19 days at sea, things really start to get into a routine. There’s breakfast, of usually oatmeal with canned fruit, or homemade yogurt with jam. All the fresh fruit is long gone. We have a couple carrots, some onions, and a few potatoes. I detest tinned vegetables, but canned mushrooms are okay. We have pickled vegetables, frozen broccoli and cauliflower, and lots of kimchi to enjoy still.

Before breakfast, I read the Fairbanks Daily News Miner (FDNM) and the NYTimes to keep up with local, national and international events. After breakfast, I work.

Lunch is ramen or leftovers from the night before. Bread is long gone and the process of making Turkish Milk bread, pan bread, or naan is too time consuming. We have tortillas so we’ll make wraps, but the fresh vegetables are gone so lunch meat on a tortilla is not really all that appetizing. I wish I would have bought some cabbage. That stuff is eternal. It does make some delicious slaw which is tasty with some fresh fish.

And speaking of fishing, we don’t have the freezer space yet for fish, so we haven’t gone fishing. Food shopping wasn’t great in the Galapagos, so we stocked up on chicken and cured sausages and have a bit of fish left over from the sail into the Galapagos. We’ll restock the freezer with fresh fish once we are in the Marquesas.

After lunch, I will finish the daily NYT puzzles and the sudoku, jumble, and cryptoquote from the FDNM. I will knit or crochet, right now working on Kat’s sweater and about to start a pair of socks.

Dinner consists of what we have stored onboard. We have about 6 months of dry storage staples: rice, pasta, grains, tinned tomatoes, instant mashed potatoes, pancake mix, oatmeal, and enough snacks to feed an empire. Average dinner is rice and beans with a protein. I’ll rotate in some pasta dishes. Almost all things get prepared in the Instant Pot because it doesn’t release a lot of moisture or heat into the saloon.

After dinner we watch the ocean move by and the sun set. Then it is onto the nightly watch shifts. Mark takes first shift from 8pm to 11pm while I go down in the hull and take a nap. I’m on second shift from 11pm to 2am. Third shift is 2am-5am and then I’m up for the day at 5am. Mark is usually up around 8am. If we need more sleep, I will go to bed before 8pm or sleep a bit after Mark gets up from the last shift. If Mark needs more sleep he can stay in bed after 8am for as long as he wants. We both can take naps anytime though the day if we are stuggling to stay awake, we just can’t both be sleeping at the same time.

Watch shifts usually consist of turning off all the lights and looking out the windows for any lights from ships that might be in the area. Our navigation system, Raymarine, is set to alert us if any boat comes within a determined perimeter of Nanook. We usually set it to 5nm. It has yet to go off. We have only seen one sailboat with the naked eye on this journey so far. There was a cargo ship by the Galapagos that showed up over 10nm out from us and the fleet of fishing boats on Day 2 and 3.

So far it has been a pleasant journey. I hope you enjoy the video.