Day 90, Year 1: Maybe Tomorrow
Date and Time: Sunday, January 15, 2006, 1600 AST
Weather: Lighter Winds, Time for the Spinnaker
Latitude: N 12 degrees 17 minutes;
Longitude: W 64 degrees 33 minutes
Location: Interior Caribbean Basin, Passage to Bonaire

If you know me personally, laid back would not be a descriptor you would apply to me. But something is definitely happening as we move further south and west. “I really should clean out the refrigerator today since I had to do an unexpected cleaning of the freezer yesterday. But not today. Maybe tomorrow.” “We really should put out a trolling line and try to catch some fresh fish. Too late today. Maybe tomorrow.” And it goes on. We have had a lovely day today sailing under spinnaker with light winds. We are just lazing along enjoying the beautiful weather.

I came on watch at 0200 last night. The full moon was overhead and the light danced on the midnight blue water. We were no longer sailing wing and wing and the winds were settling, so it was an easy night of sailing. Mark took over once the sun came up. I got a couple of hours sleep in the early morning and when I got up, we decided it was time to raise the spinnaker. For those of you who are not sailors, a spinnaker is a light weight sail used in light winds and is usually very colorful. Ours was designed to include the colors of the parrot that lived aboard when we bought the boat—yellow, green, blue, and red. It is an asymmetrical which means it flies off to one side or the other. True spinnakers billow out from the bow of the boat with an equal amount of sail to port and starboard. But whether a true spinnaker or asymmetrical, the sail area is big and you have to handle them with care. For this reason, we don’t usually leave the spinnaker out at night, but in these calm conditions, we probably will and all should be fine.

We’ve not seen many signs of life since leaving the Windwards. Yesterday I saw two pair of brown seagulls and no boats, not even during the night. This morning a tanker passed in front of us heading south and at about the same time, two very large white birds were flying west in the distance. They were too far away to identify. We are currently just north of the chain of islands off the Venezuelan coast that lead us to Bonaire. In the last hour, I have seen an increase in the number of sea gulls as we get closer to land. Other than that, we are it. It looks like we have the entire interior Caribbean Basin all to ourselves today. Maybe tomorrow we will see signs of human activity, but until then, we’ll enjoy the peace and quiet and beautiful weather.

And now for the really important things in life . . .