Sailin' fine!
Somewhere off Trivandrum
18.12.2013 - 21.12.2013
Sailing is like a game of cards, or a tabletop game. They explain it to you in great detail, you think you understand, and then on the first round you realize you have no idea what you’re doing. By the second round you’ve got half of it, and a few rounds later you wonder how it is you had doubts in the first place. So it is a bit similar here. We’re realizing that no matter how much we read and talk and demonstrate, doing is quite different.
Feels like longer we’ve been out here, even if it’s just a couple of days. Maybe it is because many things can happen in a day, so they feel very, very long. Or because we’ve been on this boat for more than two months now. Also might be because the nights are active too. Unless there’s absolutely no wind. Like last night… but even then I was woken up by the radar, big ships coming our way, it said. Nothing dangerous, just have to keep them in sight. Until now, only one cargo ship we’ve had to contact.
There are certain rules in the sea. For example, any ship that overtakes another has to take it into account (meaning go around it). Also, as a very general rule, sailboats have the right of way. So it is interesting to see a big cargo ship changing its course for us. A bit different than the land world. Here go are all equals, all creatures of the sea.
Creatures I say, not people, for it seems we have a passenger on the boat. Gerd went up the mast and, to everyone’s surprise, out flew a big, sleepy and startled fishing owl. It would not be strange it if made of our mast its new base for a few days at least. And under the boat we have a few resident fish under the boat as well. We’ve been sailing next to the shore to have some land or sea breeze, depending on the time of day, so there are some hours when there is no wind. Flat. So twice now we’ve gone swimming and diving and scraping the hull. We like the birds, and the fish too, but not the mollusks. Sorry, mollusks, it’s just how it is!
We’re almost at the tip of India. now There’s just no wind in this place, that’s why we hug the coast. But there is wind up ahead, we can see it in the maps and forecasts. So as soon as we get there, we’ll start shooting off towards the south point of Sri Lanka. More than twenty knots of wind over there! Better than our lazy three knot wind of the past days!
It’s great being out here. We ate flying fish today, it was given to us by some fishermen as thanks for not going through their net. It was better than the usual boats who come to us asking for cigarettes and alcohol. If we had brought a couple bottles of vodka with us, we’d be bathing in fish oil by now. But there are no drugs on this boat. Well, just the 20 kilos of coffee and tea! Apart from that, no drugs: no alcohol, nicotine or pot. No meat or cheese either! I’ve been craving a grilled cheese sandwich for a couple of weeks now. I’ll have to wait ‘til Dili for that... We’ll arrive there as planned it seems, sometime during the next 40-50 days. In the meantime, we are learning steadily. The other day I successfully hoisted and dropped the foresail on my own, with no fuck-ups. As if to compensate, I also dropped it into the sea. We lost some potatoes to the maggots, and a couple of old green beans. Apart for that, we are great! Healthy and tanned!
I’ll later try to add some photos, if we get another internet session before leaving the coast! But if not, well, see you later!
Posted by Zaspirucho 01:11 Archived in India Tagged fishing sailing fishermen liberty open_sea Comments (0)