Day 3: Getting In a Groove

This morning Carmen woke up and decided to bake crepes with her "special
sauce." When I awoke she was on the counter taking down the pots and
ingredients. Thanks to excellent training from her dad, this girl can
move around a kitchen and create delicious meals. She made homemade
raspberry/strawberry/applesauce compote, plus a lime & berry juice
drizzle atop homemade crepes.

Cooking is one of the duties we share aboard the boat, along with
washing dishes and checking the fruits and vegetables (most of them are
not refrigerated and in crates and baskets that we keep dark and cool –
each day we sort through them and pull out the veggies we should eat
today, throw out any that have gone bad, and refrigerate those that are
on the brink.)

Another important duty aboard the boat is to take a shift "on watch."
At all times, someone needs to be at the helm making sure the boat is
tracking properly, the sails are full and there aren't any large ships
heading our way or garbage we are going to run into. We are getting
accustomed to our on-watch schedule, which involves the three adults and
one teenager each taking two 3-hour shifts a day. My shift is from
11:00am-2:00pm and from 11:00pm-2:00am. Today Carmen helped with the
daytime shift so that I could hand-wash our clothes on the back deck.
Carmen and Niki have been helping cover some of the shifts to give us
some much-needed breaks or time to do other things.
One of the other things we did today included catching a 6-foot marlin.
Well, actually we hooked the marlin but didn't bring it in. We also
fiddled with the storm trisail. And we napped. We all nap during our
off shift times, and the rhythm of the ocean makes it almost impossible
to stay awake all day. So far our days have been sunny and breezy with
large gentle widely-spaced swells.
Today we entered a state of peacefulness. Since we lifted the anchor
three days ago, we have not run the engine and we've been setting into
our groove. It is amazing how silence can settle into a group. How it
helps us get in our groove.

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