Atlantic Crossing. Days 4–5

Atlantic Crossing. Days 4–5 Not a single vessel since the second day of the passage. We switched on the radio a couple of times—it just crackled dismally; AIS says we’re alone in the Universe, and only giant fish straighten the hooks on our fishing line and disappear into the five-kilometre depths, stubbornly refusing to become fish-for-dinner. In our misery, that evening we even had to open a tin of tuna and scoff half of it while watching Harry Potter. The closer to the equator, the hotter it gets By 8 a.m. it’s already +30. An attempt to air the aft cabin created a swimming pool on the shelves and soaked the bedding. We rinsed the salt out of our things with the last of the Cape Verde rainwater. In the winter Mediterranean, it was impossible to imagine that a quarter-bucket of water could stand on deck for five days without being knocked over. The forward cabin can’t be aired because of the spray and the dinghy lying on the hatch, and it is so damp and stuffy in there that mushrooms and vines must surely be growing already. So the young sailors sleep wherever they can. Nastya sleeps in the aft cabin, while Lada has made herself a bed under the table in the saloon, between the back of the settee and the table legs. That’s where she listens to audio fairy tales. And, shocking as it may sound, that’s where we put her to bed tonight. 🙂 The first mate tried sleeping on deck, and it would have been fine if she hadn’t had to spend the whole night bracing herself on all fours between the winches and gas cylinders to keep from flying over the guardrails. Fishing, porridge and breakfast Every morning, the young sailor goes on her ritual inspection of the deck and, as regular as clockwork, finds a kamikaze flying fish there every other day. Today, a tiny flying fish was already waiting in the frying pan when the spinning rod’s line started rattling. The captain dashed over to haul in the catch, and the young sailor pulled the landing net out of the locker... We didn’t even have to take in the sail: the little fish came in easily and was splashing about on the line barely a boat-length from the yacht... Why, we’d already looked it in the eye! Just the right size for our little frying pan. But no—it got away! So we had to cook millet porridge. During breakfast, flapping her sail with gusto, the yacht suddenly charged off towards Antarctica for some reason. It turned out she had gone wild with freedom because the windvane steering cable had snapped. So instead of tea and jam, the captain sat with his backside in the ocean, suspended in his harness as he repaired Iron Felix (that’s what we call our windvane). 🙂 By lunchtime on the fifth day, we had covered 485 miles. Our latest geographical discovery agrees with the ancients’ view: the Earth is a disc covered in water. And Lady Mary is the centre of that disc. Point O at the centre of the circle. And nothing else....