Day 11 - Christians Ciabatta Bread

Today was a special day. So many small things happened that made the day perfect and beautiful that I am smiling with a big smile while writing this during my night shift.

The day started with me having the morning shift. Somehow the morning shift is the nicest of the night shifts because you get to see the sunrise on your own and sometimes the sunrises viewed from the boat are truly magnificent. Today was such a day.

Shortly after the sun started rising, Rebecca wakes up and starts repairing the last bit of the sail so that we are ready to put it back up in the early morning when Christian is up. While she is repairing the sail I am listening to some Hiatus Kaiyote music watching the sun go higher and higher in the sky. It even rains a little and the clouds look amazing while small drizzling rain sprays gently on my face with a big grin watching the sun.

Once Rebecca is done stitching the sail, we wake up Christian, eat a little bit of bread with Nutella and some of the leftover hummus from yesterday and then start the day with the maneuver of getting our sails back up. This is a bit of a stressful situation since it means letting the sail loose and flapping in the wind, which can be dangerous if it hits somebody on the head because the sail is quite powerful when in the wind. Luckily everything goes smoothly and without any hiccups and soon after the breakfast we have our trusty double sail butterfly setup up and running again, happy to have made this tricky maneuver so flawlessly with nice teamwork. This feeling of working well together and fixing things on the boat when something is amiss, and succeeding in doing so, is extraordinary. It's the feeling of a task well done, of a small accomplishment and it's just great. High fiving each other for the task well done. And in time because the wind and the waves start picking up a bit.

For the second breakfast/lunch we have a big portion of muesli each. It's with lots of dried fruits and even some coconut pieces, extra tasty today as a treat for the job well done and after eating I go back down under deck for taking a well deserved nap. Once back awake I read a little. Then everybody takes a shower, one after another. Sitting there, completely naked on the deck out in the sun, watching the horizon, and rinsing myself with the cold sea water, I am just tremendously happy. Grinning inwardly about how beautiful this moment really is. How human, and how special. After showering we even wash some of our clothes. Rinsing them in a lot of soap with salt water and then giving them another little rinse with fresh water to get the salt out. On the boat everything is about conserving fresh water, because our tanks are limited and we don't have a fresh water maker on board. While washing we splash around with the salt water, and have some lighthearted fun. It reminds me of playing water fights as a child a bit. We also try to fish a little during the whole day but catch only seagrass.

While Rebecca and I were washing the clothes Christian made another sour dough bread. And I decide to make some milk rice for lunch too. But cooking milk rice takes much longer than expected and so I start preparing the pumpkin soup too in unison and we decide to eat the bread, pumpkin soup and milk rice for dinner, all together as a big feast. And what a feast it was.

While we were eating the sun slowly set in front of the boat, looking marvelous with the sails out and we stopped our dinner short of the milk rice desert, to watch the whole thing. Our clothes were still drying in the wind too and we took them inside before it got dark out completely.

Finally we ate the milk rice. Chris made a sugar cinnamon mix to refine our desert and we even had some cold canned peaches to add to the whole thing. Everybody was happy with the food for tonight. Smiling, eating, at peace with the world and blissed out about us sailing together.

And after all was said and done we still had lots and lots of pumpkin soup, bread and milk rice left over for the next day to enjoy. Everybody went to bed and I prepared for my night shift and am now writing this as I sit under the moon light in the wind, listening to the waves on one ear and "My Favorite Things" by John Coltrane on the other. Such is life. Traveling. Good company. Good food. Nice music. Nothing on the schedule that is pressing. Stress free existence. Beauty. Such is life indeed.