Andryusha's grandparents were inventive people. The captain often quotes their simple little jokes at just the right moment, and they never fail to make us laugh.
“Don't wave your ha-ands if God didn't give you bra-ains,” the captain chants whenever one of us is exercising. Naturally, we howl with laughter.
The weather is quiet. At six in the morning everyone is still asleep, and I take the wheel to correct our course. Then I hear from the aft cabin: “Don't turn the whee-el if God didn't give you bra-ains,” the captain comes out whispering in the same singsong rhythm.
Naturally, I laugh. — Good morning, darling. And we boil water for tea while the girls finish sleeping.
It has worked out that they go to bed later than we do. In the evenings they are passively on watch, glancing between our course and their books. Yesterday we banned them from glancing at a TV series until they redeem themselves in front of literature. Around two in the morning I wake up and keep half an eye on the watch until dawn, sleeping in intervals and waking the captain only if something urgent happens. Though what emergency could there be now? Today, for example, from three until six we were simply drifting toward the south of New Zealand. At six, thank goodness, somebody switched on a light breeze and we started moving vaguely north again.
Over the previous three days we advanced only about sixty miles toward our goal, though before that we were covering 100–130 miles a day. You stop expecting linear movement from the sea. You learn simply to live in the ocean without counting the days to the finish. At last, in warmth and calm, we are beginning to manage it. Tuna is drying on strings beneath the solar panels, and we are finishing the fish soup.
Preparing for war
Or rather, for the heat. It looks like a movie village preparing for an orc attack: young and old boiling tar, digging anti-tank trenches and mixing Molotov cocktails — though what the orcs have to do with those is another question.
In much the same way the crew of Lady Mary is urgently installing a heat-protection system. We cut shapes from opaque leatherette-like fabric to fit the wheelhouse windows, glue on Velcro and devise a way to roll the shades up so they are easy to remove and reinstall.
Guess where we got the opaque fabric? We will answer immediately: from an Australian rubbish pile :). In Australia it is normal to put old toys and bicycles, unwanted furniture and office equipment out by the roadside on certain days. For several days the stuff waits for someone to take it home; whatever is left is later collected for disposal or recycling.
I am hanging under the ceiling in a peculiar pose, measuring the windows above the high chart table. Only two shades for the forward windows remain to be cut. The other eight, plus one for a hatch, are already fitted. We will make them for the galley and saloon hatches too. It will be cool inside our yacht.
Though we will not have long to enjoy what, after the Southern Ocean, we now call “cool”. Soon the shade temperature will reach around 30°C and that will be that. It already feels like summer. For the second night we are sleeping with the portholes open and have taken off our hoodies. We are at 31° south, and summer is coming.
It is good that we managed to repair the aft awning in Tasmania; we spent a whole day sewing in new zips. It should last another few months, though we will have to sacrifice the second mast while using it. The awning is mounted on the mizzen boom, which makes the mizzen itself unusable. We are weighing necessity against sufficiency and are not rushing into anything.
Once the real heat arrives, life will move outside — weather permitting. We have washed the salt out of the cockpit and off the stern, though the wind is building now and may soak everything all over again.
About Captain Cook
We are studying wind charts and the routes of explorers. Right now our track lies as close as it possibly can to the routes Captain Cook sailed during his three circumnavigations. Over ten years, from 1768 to 1778, James Cook traced loops through these waters aboard *Endeavour* and *Resolution* that, judging by the chart, would make anyone else's route look simple.
During our circumnavigation through the Southern Ocean we crossed Cook's track more than once. Now we are following portions of his first and second voyages. The great navigator searched these waters for the southern continent, discovered many islands — including New Zealand and later Hawaii — demonstrated that the waters south of Africa and South America connect into one Southern Ocean, and was the first to complete a full circuit of it. On his second voyage he became the first person in history to cross the Antarctic Circle and observed the aurora australis. Cook also reached 74°41′ N while searching for a passage from the Pacific to the Atlantic above Canada.
We cannot yet visit the place where he met his inglorious end. The Hawaiian Islands belong to the United States, and without a visa there is no way in. Ironically, Hawaii is open now despite the pandemic. Ah, if only we had visas: from Tahiti we would head into the Northern Hemisphere via Hawaii, then on to the United States or Mexico. It would be shorter and more pleasant than fighting our way to Panama against the trade winds.
Our final destination is still undecided. What are you hearing about borders reopening, guys?
Wishing you strong health! Thank you for the comments and greetings. Sergey Yakubenko regularly forwards them to us, while Yulia Galushina reposts our chronicles to the Community tab on our YouTube channel and sends us the comments from there as well. You should see how much pleasure we get from reading them.
Hugs to everyone! Sent by satellite from day 35 at sea. Coordinates at 15:30 local time: 32°24′ S, 162°07′ W.
Heartfelt thanks to everyone who contributes to the ship's fund through YooMoney and PayPal. Thank you for becoming part of the project! 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.