Day 2

Well I am cheating to post on our Transatlantic blog but here we are on Moondance again.  This time it is just Bill, Dana, Tom and me – the elders of the transatlantic crossing.  We are delivering Moondance from St. Thomas to Newport.  We are skipping the Bermuda stop and expect this 1500 nautical mile trip to take around 9 days.

We left yesterday, April 29th, at 3:30 pm.  It is 1:30 pm now and we are about 150 miles north of St. Thomas.  Blessedly cloudy skies and nice breezes.  We saw a whale yesterday just off of Anguilla, the biggest I have seen sailing.  He was bigger than Moondance.  He (or she) was moving along at quite a clip, giving us a thar-she-blows show.  Saw lots of flying fish today, and a graceful tern that swooped around us for 2 hours, plucking up the little fishes that were spooked by the passage of a vessel.We are settling into a routine.  I devised yet another watch system: solo watches of 2 hours and 40 minutes.  This makes nine watches per day which rotates the night watches automatically, moving each person one watch earlier each day.  It also has the benefit of every watch for an individual starting exactly eight hours after his last watch ended.  The downside is that we have odd times to get used to, like the 8:40am-11:20am watch.  We have printouts posted in three places to keep us straight.

I prepared dinner last night, beef tips in cream sauce.  I couldn’t read the French instructions so I sent a copy to an unnamed child, who translated for me, and I quote, “Leave the bag in somethings something something a casserole something during 15-20 minutes.” Oh, that, got it now.  It also said to cook rice.  The directions were also in French but it seemed to say 2 parts water to one part rice and 13 minutes.  I did this and out came some of the best-tasting rice I have ever eaten.  Sure miss Jackie though!

Love to all, MJ