Day 2 - Out at Sea

Today the feeling started to sink in that this is going to be the place where we will be spending the next two and a half weeks together. This is a bit of a crazy feeling because the boat is not that big and I can already feel how it might become a bit too small for all of us after some time. But let's see.

I am still somewhat seasick from the day before. This boat rolls quite a lot from starboard to port side, much unlike the other two boats that I have been on so far. And this motion to me makes me sea sick the most. It's really rather bad and I can still feel it during the day. Sleeping a lot, having some headaches and in general not feeling well while being downstairs. But I also have medication that I picked up in Tangier, Morocco, to help with motion sickness and sea sickness and I take another one of those pills.

The day itself is really rather uneventful, we are screwing around a little bit with the radio, chatting with the other people from the other boats who over night got completely out of sight already. Multiple miles between us and everybody else we can still hear their voices on the radio, asking if things are alright.

The wind autopilot is still broken but our normal electric autopilot is doing a good job. Still, to conserve it's life, Rebecca and I practice steering the boat by hand. It's quite an interesting task to steer a boat, especially out at sea with some waves and wind and sails up. You have to keep the wind coming from the right direction, all the while maintaining course, which requires some skill. It's meditation in a way. And a source of flow.

After a few hours of steering we both grow tired of it though and we put the autopilot back onto the helm letting it do it's job. We also put out the fishing lines with our self made "fishing alarm". It's essentially a beer can strapped onto a rubber band and tied once around the main fishing line. If a fish bites, the line becomes taught and the beer can on the rubber band snaps around, making a clinking and clanging noise, telling us that we've got something biting.

So far we haven't caught anything yet but Christian says this worked beautifully with Wolfgang, the guy that was on the boat previously and so I trust him and this makeshift solution.

In general I have the feeling that boats over time acquire many of these knick knack, makeshift, practical, thrifty "make do with what you have" solutions. And I like this a lot. It reminds me of India somehow. And being on the boat is an adventure... Even if the rolling makes me nauseous sometimes.

Eventually the sea sickness pills kick in and I can actually go under deck and cook things. The plan for the day is to use vegetables and make a fresh soup with beetroots, carrots, potatoes, and all the other things we have. It's a beautiful soup in the end, and with the still fresh bread from the small bakery in Mindelo it tastes superb. The only problem is that it is a bit of a hassle to eat soup on a boat. The continuous rocking back and forth makes eating it without spilling it, somewhat difficult. And to make matters worse the soup is still fresh and boiling hot. But nothing happens and we all eat our soup with bread with big smiles on our faces.

After food the first full day nears itself to an end. I slept most of the day and was seasick most of it too, but it's getting better, I think. The night shift was a horror trip today though, because I had to constantly fight against the tiredness because of the drowsiness of the seasickness medication.

But somehow I made it through my shift without falling asleep, luckily there were no boats or anything else of interest that would have needed quick action on my end. It's the Atlantic and somehow around here, there are almost no boats because its outside of the major shipping lanes. Still it's weird to be on our own. With no other boat for literal miles. Let's hope nothing bad happens.

Fair winds.