Atlantic Crossing. Days 13–14

Atlantic Crossing. Days 13–14 Two weeks in the Ocean of Calm. To be honest, one day would have been enough, just for contrast. Three days without wind in 35-degree heat feel like “stiflingly hot and totally unbearable.” At night it’s +29 in the wheelhouse. Honestly, we thought we had adapted well to +45 in The Gambia, and afterwards +30 already felt “cool.” But the ocean has shown us that our acclimatisation is over. Yesterday we made 14 miles in twenty-four hours (compared with 120–150 a week ago), and even that was thanks to a squall that swooped in from under a cloud. Squalls like these break up the dreary, sweltering days. Thanks to them, we’ve developed a system for collecting fresh water—we rigged up a whole contraption with a funnel and a hose under the gooseneck. Thanks to the squalls, we get a proper shower, cool air and wind—hooray! Admittedly, it blows any which way, often straight on the nose in an utterly hooligan fashion, whipping up waves in every direction. And after the wind and thunderstorm comes... yep, another calm. Chasing clouds 🙂 Over the past night, with no wind, a contrary current carried Lady Mary 11 miles towards southern Africa :). Boredom has produced another technique: you can chase clouds. Today they suddenly surrounded us on all sides, but only one of them shed any rain. The buckets didn’t fill with water, there was nothing to finish washing with, so we started the engine and charged off after the fattest cloud, which seemed to be creeping up ahead of us. It was overcast, the batteries were low, so we needed to start the engine anyway. We chased and chased it for an hour, but the rain remained as far away as ever. We switched off. We’re standing still. The cloud is passing us by. Lada and I have invented a fairy-tale clapping game (a tip for mums: it develops a sense of rhythm, an ear for music, motor skills... and poems are easier to learn when the words are linked to claps. It also helps when learning to read and write). Instead of the well-known nursery rhyme, we recite Pushkin’s fairy tale about the sleeping princess. The funny thing is, Ladka remembers almost everything flawlessly up to the point where the princess, in the deep, dark forest, “... walked and walked, and came upon a tower.” Then she starts stumbling. Not the princess—the young sailor ;). We have our meaningful clapping sessions in the shade of the wheelhouse in the mornings and evenings, while the sun is not yet at its zenith. Yesterday we gave ourselves a crash course in tropical cyclones and discovered that they spin in completely the opposite direction from what we thought last week ;). Another crash course clarified the shark situation: the sailing directions say they very rarely attack people; you just shouldn’t swim in the ocean with a string of bleeding fish. Well, we weren’t going to argue, so we no longer take bloody game swimming with us. We’ve stopped worrying about sharks, and now we wait out the worst of the heat astern, spending about two hours at a time in the water on a rope, much to the children’s delight. With nothing to do, we entertain ourselves with food. Nastya and I work our magic in the galley (without a swim beforehand, this can result in overheating). Yesterday’s lunch was Thai seafood curry with coconut milk. As for seafood—it was a sea of fish. It turned out delicious; even the captain abandoned his vegetarian affectations and polished off two plates ;)). Today has been declared by the cook to be a day of Russian-French friendship. And cuisine :). And therefore dinner is a Russian New Year’s salad with a French name. If you’ve guessed the name of the salad, write it in the comments ))). Let’s note down the coordinates where we’re standing: 9°11′ N, 43°21′ W. If anyone feels like it, send us your greetings. Yes!—and some wind, please: we’re ordering a steady broad reach, 15–20 knots, for a week :). We have 727 miles left to our destination. We’ve covered 1,188 miles along the rhumb line (not counting all our circling in place and drifting back towards Africa).