Day 10 - Dolphins

This day was without doubt one of the most eventful days of the whole journey, because so many beautiful things happened and everything all at once on the same day.

I woke up because of a loud banging noise on the hull of the ship, and my mind immediately is awake heart beating thinking that somebody went overboard and is now banging on the hull of the ship from the outside, trying to make himself heard. I pop up out of my bed, out of the hatch in my bow cabin and look out and scream if everything is alright. But both Christian and Rebecca are there, looking a bit puzzled and confused as to my agitation. Christian sits on the bow, pounding his hand into the boat from the outside. He has a rad smile on his face and explains dolphins. And then I see them, only two, grey shadows in the water, coming to the surface right next to the boat, plopping out with their nose and fin, breathing air, and then going back under the water. We just watch the two dolphins for most of the morning, taking turns who can sit at the bow. Sitting there at the bow, is the most exhilarating feeling I've had on the boat so far. It's just so beautiful, because you can feel all the motion of the boat and every once in a while the nose dips down into a wave low enough that your feet can feel the salty water. And the dolphins are just there.

Like you can almost touch them with your feet. They stay there, because they enjoy playing with the bow wave in front of the boat, taking the push and letting themselves glide through the current, surfing with the boat through the waves. It looks like they are having a ball, like they are smiling and laughing and playing with the boat and the water. "Somehow, I think that dolphins are animals that spend their days living an easy life, playing games and laughing all day", I say to Rebecca. And we both laugh to. Maybe we are also much like dolphins. Adventuring out into the sea, playing fun games, laughing and surfing the waves enjoying this wild ride were on, called life. Maybe that's what Douglas Adams meant with the idea that maybe dolphins are the most intelligent species on this planet. Because they figured out how to have a fun carefree life instead of building societies that gain technology while losing the beauty in the "mundane" everyday. The dolphins go to and fro from the boat, sometimes close sometimes far, but they stay with us, the same two, for the entire day. Playing.

Once back in the cockpit we celebrate a little bit. It's the 9th day and we've made half the distance to our destination. 1000 more sea miles to go and we are there, in Guadeloupe, having crossed the Atlantic and sailed to the Caribbean, like true pirates. To celebrate we write a small letter, put it into an empty wine bottle, cork it and send it on their way. I truly hope that somebody someday will find our little bottled message because it's beautiful. Rebecca wrote it, we all signed it, we even printed a little photograph, and added that to the message. Yes! We have a little small pocket printer on board and it's the coolest thing I've ever seen. It's small and lightweight and you connect to it via Bluetooth and it magically prints little Polaroid sized pictures which is absolutely mind blowing to me. We have a good laugh while filming the throwing in of the bottle, holding speeches about it, and then, just like that, we throw it into the water and it floats. Let's see if we'll get a reply some day to our lil Flaschenpost.

After all this, Christian remarks to us that there is more work to do today. We look at him with big eyes and are like: "uhm what work exactly? We mounted the entire thing yesterday what else is there to do besides tuning it?" He's just like: "look there, our sail is ripping". And indeed, it is. Only a little bit, like a meter but we decide not to risk anything and so we plan to take the sail down, stitch the rip, and then put it back up that day. And so we eat a little bit of breakfast, I have the leftovers from the day before with some scrambled eggs and then get to work.

First we roll in the foresails, then we put down and fix the two beams that were holding the foresails down to the deck so they can't get lost. Then we steer away from the wind and let out the sails. That's when the adrenaline starts going, because usually the sails are kept in check and from flailing around by the two ropes (called sheets in sailing lingo) but we removed those so that we can pull down the sails. The sails flail around quite a bit and you have to keep your head really really low, as bit to get hit by them, otherwise it would hurt or mean lights out or man over board for sure because the sails have a lot of force of the wind behind them.

Eventually the sails are unrolled completely and flap around to the front and away from the boat and then we start to roll them in. One person let's go of the halyard, a rope fixing the sails to the top of the mast, slowly bit by bit, so that the other two can pull in the sails from the bottom and put them on the boat. Just pull on the end, and make sure that it doesn't get stuck anywhere or falls into the water with the corner. My sails catches a bit of water with the corner and I only barely can pull it back, adrenaline is racing, and from pulling it outward to far with the water, it gets stuck on the anchor, kind of the worst case. But Christian and I somehow get it unstuck again, and keep pulling both sides in. We switch roles, instead of each pulling one sail he makes sure that they move smoothly down the rolling mechanism, and I pull one side, hop over to the other side and pull that, and then repeat. It's around midday by now and the sun is burning hard and with the exercise of pulling the sail, the adrenaline and the running around it feels like my body is overheating. I sweat and work my ass off. Because we don't have any sails up, the effect of the waves under motor is also amplified. Sails give stability to the boat.

One time, I am unhooked to go over to the other side, while the boat tips and rolls over to the side suddenly, and I am gone flying down to the other side, unclipped and lose, I crash my hand into the railing luckily, my pulse further accelerating, quickly clipping in before the next wave comes. This was close, my mind thinks. That could have easily been me going overboard there had the wave had some more speed or I missed the rail and instead grabbed over it. Luckily nothing happened. And we pulled in the rest of the sail putting the rip so that it's easily accesible so that we can patch it up throughout the day.

Once the sail is brought in, there's not much to do anymore for all three of us, so I try to make myself useful in supporting the others stitching together the sail. Getting stuff from below the deck, the tools and the sailing yarn and patches.

Christian and Rebecca meanwhile start assessing the damage and begin the long process of stitching the sail, at first punching holes into the harder parts of the material that they can then sow through later.

While they do that I wash up and start making bread. It's the first time in my life that I make bread I think and I ask Christian for how to do it because he prepared bread the other day. His recipe is quite easy. Half normal flour, half rye flour, some salt, some sour dough, some yeast and then mix and knead it all together. Let it sit for an hour in a warm place (everywhere in the boat is too warm to be comfortable by now so this is easy) and then put it into the oven and bake for an hour or so. I prepare the dough and take a little nap, while the dough rests. When kneading it into a bread shape, Christian can't handle watching anymore, he thinks it looks like I am violating the dough somehow, like I am doing it seriously wrong haha. But I think it has to be done that way somehow and none of us really knows. In the end we have a vaguely bread shaped thing in a glass form that we put into the oven.

Another hour later we are greeted by the beautiful smell of freshly baked bread and a decent loaf emerges from the oven. We're all quite happy with the result. Next time it could use somewhat more salt though.

All the while Rebecca is still stitching the sail.

We have a little bit of lunch, little by little, each for their own. I make myself some muesli, Rebecca does the same, and we also make some instant noodles for the three of us. It's simple, but just what we needed and by the end of our lunch break the bread is also ready.

The rest of the day Rebecca and I spend talking on deck while she is stitching the sail. It's repetitive somewhat boring work, so she's happy for the company. Eventually the sun starts setting, and we call it a day, secure the sails to the deck with some ropes so they can't do anything crazy at night, and then have a little sundowner in the cockpit, watching the sunset together.

The boat with its sails down like this in the sunset looks a bit sad. Like a bird with broken wings, lying there, waiting to fly again. Of course this makes no sense but it's what it looks like. But let's see hopefully tomorrow we'll get the sails back up.

After the sun is down, I disappear into the kitchen to start working on our dinner. The plan is to make some hummus and other little plates to go with the freshly baked bread as to have a little potpourri of things to eat with the bread so that you can mix and match whatever you want to eat with it.

In the end we have quite the feast, little pickled cucumbers, beetroot, fine slices of grilled fish, some cheese, hummus and guacamole, all together with the fresh bread and some butter.

It's a good end to this somewhat stressful day. We agree on the game plan for the morning and then I go to sleep, again without having had the chance to shower because there was too much to do that kept us occupied the whole day. It's weird how on a boat there's always something to do, and there's rarely a day where you truly relax. It's a journey and you have to work to get across. And so we work. And laugh, and play. Like the dolphins.