— The fishing rod is rattling! Probably a squid! the captain announced when the evening movie went quiet and we could finally hear what was happening outside. — Hooray! Lada rejoiced. — Oh no! Nastya rejoiced. And the first two ran off into the darkness.
— Mum, come here quickly! We caught a bird! — Oh no! Mum was upset. What do you need? A torch? A knife?
About three years ago we once caught an albatross on the fishing line. The line snapped and the poor bird disappeared into the waves; we never found out what happened to it. This time it was a petrel. Fortunately it had not swallowed the hook — one wing was simply tangled in the line. The wing was intact and we freed the feathers. — It will sit on the water and recover, the captain said.
The children and I worried because the poor thing had spent so long tumbling along behind the boat on the line. Would it really recover? We reeled in the fishing gear and stopped catching anything at all. — Ah well, the captain said, we could have had some chicken for dinner. You like chicken! — Nooo! — But you buy it in the shop. — It is already dead in the shop! the children defended themselves. — In that case a dead one ought to be buried, but you…
And then we all laughed, inventing a story about buying chickens at the shop only to give them a proper burial. Fortunately we did not have to bury this petrel. We hope it is the very same one now flying astern like a black bolt of lightning.
Weather and bolts
The wind is wandering between a calm and a light headwind, and Lady Mary is losing the pace she built up over the last few days. But we are still moving. According to the chart, in a few degrees we should enter a zone of easterly winds — perhaps the trade winds already, or perhaps simply a coincidence. Our friends Max and Natasha Ivanov, who are waiting for us in Tahiti, tell us not to relax: systems with hurricane-force winds are roaming across our route.
Well, we are not relaxing today. A headwind is invigorating, and the boat is heeling again. At least the motion is not too bad because the sea has not yet had time to build after the calm. A bolt has fallen out of the radar mounting on the mizzen mast. A second one has unscrewed by a third of its length, so somebody needs to climb the mast and tighten it. The deckhand has already volunteered and is discussing the working details. All we need now is suitable weather.
We have already doubled one mizzen shroud and will replace the second one because the wire has begun to unlay. These are all consequences of the storm that hammered the hull and deck during the first week of the passage, on the boundary between the forties and fifties.
Life aboard
Our Groundhog Days flow along steadily and, in places, quite pleasantly. This morning we watched the documentary *Land of the Soviets: Forgotten Leaders* about Lavrentiy Beria. We paused often to argue, ask the girls questions and give answers. Finally this kind of family film-watching has returned with the good weather.
Board games have returned too. We have a game called Gorynych with a pile of cards and rules that we forget whenever we stop playing for a while, then reconstruct as if for the first time. Until we forget again, we play before dinner — the deckhand insists on it very strongly.
The rest of the time goes to work and lessons. We must not disgrace ourselves in front of our beloved school. And of course we devote ourselves wholeheartedly to food. The cupcakes baked by the deckhand never seem to run out. Yesterday we conjured up Mimosa salad for dinner; the day before, pumpkin cream soup. We still have plenty of apples and citrus fruit, while potatoes are sprouting in the hold. We are wondering whether to plant them around the perimeter now that they are already putting out shoots. Then perhaps we would not need to call at shore for provisions at all.
And shore — the first coconut islands — should appear on our route in about two weeks. Whether we will actually be able to get access to those coconuts is something we do not dare predict.
About shores
— Morning mail! the captain announces after the communication session. For the girls this works better than any alarm clock.
Our dear Sergey Yakubenko regularly forwards your comments on the posts to us. It is the best medicine for loneliness. Thank you, friends, for being with us!
And by the way, friends, please write in the comments if any of you know what is happening with South Korea under the current pandemic restrictions. Is it still closed to Russians, or has anything shifted — perhaps there are some hidden routes in? Does it accept yachtspeople who have gone half-wild after months on the deep blue sea? Sometimes a country is formally closed but it is still possible to arrive by yacht. And after months in the ocean, the option of reaching Korea suits us much better than Panama. Perhaps our collective brain can come up with something :).
Hugs to you all, and may the world become normal again soon. Sent by satellite from 32°25′ S, 165°08′ W.
I had barely finished writing this report when the fishing rod started rattling again and we landed a fat tuna of about five kilograms. Now the crew has a difficult job: processing all this fish, because we do not have a refrigerator :).
Huge thanks to everyone who contributes to the success of the expedition through YooMoney and PayPal! To see where we are now, open the Route tab. It shows Lady Mary's track from the Rockstar Iridium 360 tracker provided by MVS Telecom.