Christmas in six-metre waves. The Furious Fifties seem to have realised that they are carrying not only fish and petrels on their backs. Why else would they be driving us between the breakers? Lady Mary presses the crests of the tall, ponderous, self-important waves down with her belly and soars to the height of a two-storey house. Once again, we were glad to have a heavy ocean-going yacht (you can read about her in the website menu). And despite the substantial sea state, the crew can lead a fairly lively life. Weeell, lively. With the temperatures not exactly high, the children have taken to sleeping until around ten and emerge from their den only when they catch the scent of breakfast. In the morning, it is 11–12°C inside the boat, and you can even see your breath. But during the day we warm our little home up to 20°C, and apple and pear trees immediately blossom everywhere. Our young sailor has started wearing a hat around the yacht. It is Nastya’s hat, a teenager’s one, and Lada, in harem pants, with her tummy bare and her hair tucked under the hat, looks like a cute little chav. Why are you wearing a hat, daughter? I’m cold! Then why aren’t you wearing a shirt or a jumper? I’m hot! There’s a fine how-do-you-do for you.
The dining room has firmly established itself on the settee in the wheelhouse. We blocked the space between the table legs and the settee with cushions; now this is the only place where plates and mugs do not go flying. That wheelhouse settee is generally indispensable around the house. Firstly, it is the only place that is completely dry, because it is closest to the heater. Secondly, draughts sweep past it, and once a week it gets a visit from the rare near-polar sun. Thirdly, it is now the only place where two people can sleep. Head to toe, of course, and twisted into a pretzel, but still. Why head to toe, and why there? The 30-knot wind may be blowing almost from astern, but its furious strength creates quite a heel. Lada sleeps on the settee in the saloon, blocked off at the edge like a tube, so there is nowhere for her to fall. And the huge aft berth goes either to Nastya alone or to Andryukha. They pretend to relieve each other on night watch, although in fact I am the one keeping watch most of the time. Tonight the boat kept alternately rounding sharply up into the wind and bearing away, and the wheel had to be corrected every fifteen minutes. Well, it was my own fault for lying down closest to the helm, so I had to keep steering. Anyway, you get the idea who does the most work in our crew.
Speaking of work. The damp and cold affect children and adults differently. The captain and I have something to do every minute; there is not even time for a cup of tea. One moment it is writing texts and working on concepts, the next it is time to wipe down the walls. Nastya, meanwhile, has developed a rich inner life, and it is not easy to stir our sailor into action. Unless, of course, it involves playing the guitar or running out on deck to reef the sails. She is always delighted to do that, as though going on a spacewalk. She puts on her spacesuit, gloves and hat underneath, and off she goes. We can barely get Lada to sit down and do some writing or sums. Even the beautiful diary she began with such enthusiasm has lain untouched for several days. Yesterday, for therapeutic purposes, we took away her Potter book for a couple of days. Never mind: today she is merrily bouncing around without any Potter at all, together with her imaginary friend named Lara. She drew a cheerful face, plaits and bows on an inflatable ball and chases it all around the yacht, tossing it up with a stick. And whenever she is asked about minuends and other spelling words, she somehow deftly steers the conversation towards loftier matters. Though she did spend the whole morning reading us interesting facts about various dolphin species and chanting, “Thank you to Granny Sveta for giving me such a book!”
Over the past twenty-four hours, we covered a record distance of 145 nautical miles. We have sailed almost 4,500 miles since the hot Society Islands. Cape Horn is 1,326 miles away. And from there it is just a stone’s throw to our final destination, Ushuaia, Argentina—about 200 miles. Today we will celebrate Christmas with whatever God has provided. And He has already provided porridge, sir; quinoa with tinned fish and green beans; and a saucepan of cocoa. I’ll go and see what tasty tins are left in the lockers. We need to save a few treats for cracking open when we enter the final thousand miles—a Coca-Cola, for example, of which we have a whopping 0.33 litres between us, and perhaps a chocolate bar.
Merry Christmas to every one of you, our dear friends! Thank you for your support in the comments and for sending your warm greetings to this cold part of the Southern Ocean. We used to write an individual thank-you to each of our partners who helped sustain the expedition through PayPal.me/TravelyFamily. At present, we have no way to send personal letters. So we send our heartfelt thanks to Dmitry D. from Novosibirsk, Sergei R. from Antananarivo, user ARMYTEK, Denis K. from Moscow, Mikhail P. from Zlatoust, Alexander B. from Nizhny Novgorod, and user szmastertailor from the USA. Such support is a great spur to our blog-writing efforts, because the workload of running various projects leaves less and less time for our own website.
There are still no vessels or aquatic wildlife anywhere around us. But some friends wrote to say that in summer they had encountered ice in the ocean in the forties—admittedly, in the Northern Hemisphere. Anticipating what may lie ahead, we are wondering whether it is time to switch on the radar. May all your wishes come true! 52S 104W
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