Atlantic Passage. Days 6–8 We’re exactly halfway across the ocean! For the first time in the past six days, a ship passed along the horizon, reminding us that shipping lanes do exist, and they’re right here. We have communications again! That’s the main event. Yesterday we spent all day trying to reach a satellite: the signal was good, but there was no connection. We thought that was it—we’d have about 500 miles of radio silence. We downloaded the weather via a radio receiver (! the wonders of modern technology!). The captain spent the entire evening and half the morning working his magic on the receiver as it shrieked away. Meanwhile, the iPad listened and deciphered those trills, producing a facsimile weather chart on the screen. Though at first glance it’s not easy to tell the boundaries of the seas from the isobars and isotherms )). But today, after several failed attempts, the captain managed to connect to another satellite, a Panamanian one this time. And the crew’s joy knew no bounds! We received greetings from our mums and Nastya’s friends—and the forecast, of course.
Spray through the windows and other creatures 🙂 The weather is wonderful. If it weren’t for the swell, which is a little too high—up to 3–4 metres—we could lead a perfectly normal life. Without worrying that a wave might pour through the narrow gap of a half-closed heads portlight, flood not only the bathroom right up to the thresholds, but also send a bucketful seeping into the aft cabin ). The first mate restrained a stream of untranslatable language and disappeared with a sigh into the flooded quarters. At night, lightning blazes all around us, but gives Lady Mary a wide berth, spitting rain at her a couple of times. Then the junior crew member and I leap up, woken by drops falling on our faces, and rush to dog down the hatches—she in the saloon, I in the wheelhouse, where we sleep on narrow benches, because this is the only place with any air. Ladka is roughing it like a gypsy under the table on a mat ;))). How the captain survives the nights in the aft cabin, Neptune alone knows. We discovered that the bookshelf had got soaked during the rainy season, and that the piano cover had grown mouldy over a week at sea. The piano itself seems unharmed, but there may be worse to come—we still can’t open the cabin windows, after all. And now we’ve dogged down the heads portlight as well.
Lada and I dried out the storybooks while she lamented that today was the saddest day of her life: the beautiful books had been ruined by water. An hour later, the two young sailors were singing songs together, chatting with their legs dangling over the stern, no longer mourning the loss to children’s literature. There’s no point going out into the ocean without an awning over the cockpit: you’ll either burn to a crisp or fall ill from suffocation below. We spend almost the entire day on deck. We eat, read, sing... Nastya listens to French, we eat again, Lada and I play dominoes, we argue with the captain about the prospects of homeschooling aboard this particular vessel... We sing, go to the galley to cook, eat, wash ourselves with water from a bottle... At dusk, it’s a film and then bed: on the benches, in the aft cabin, and under the table. Such is our simple ocean entertainment. We have plenty of food, the fruit hasn’t run out yet, all 10 kilograms of bananas ripened at once, and the whole crate of apples still looks as fresh as ever. Speaking of which, I should go and sort through them—perhaps there’s something we don’t know :).
On fishing Fishing is clearly trying to teach us something. Yesterday, for example, we caught a piece of floating rope with a scrap of net attached, and an hour before that a bright green plastic bag had drifted past the hull. Right in the middle of the Atlantic, mind you! Almost two thousand kilometres from the nearest land. A couple of times we also caught squid tentacles. Once, something bit off the lure and everything attached to it; then another unfinished meal neatly removed the double hook from the leader and vanished. How is that poor fool going to live down there now with a huge hook in its mouth?... So far, all these ridiculous manoeuvres—dropping the sail and hauling in the line—are merely honing our trawling skills, sowing doubts, and bringing us no material reward.
We have covered 880 nautical miles. About a thousand remain.