March 17, 2019
Charm is sailing like her name at the moment. If St. Patrick’s
Day has brought us the luck of the Irish, that will continue all night.
We had more fun putting the spinnaker up and down today. The sock (thing that
makes the sail easier to deploy) wasn’t working and Joe wanted the repaired
part of the sail on the opposite side so we took the sail down and removed the
sock and flipped the sail. Without the sock, the spinnaker is far more
unwieldy. We started to put it up again but an unfortunate twist and the
bowsprit conspired against us and we got another rip in the sail.
As we were sewing on another cannibalized piece from our other spinnaker as a
patch, John and I decided that, like most temperamental creatures, this
spinnaker just needed more attention. Now, after having been raised and lowered
a half dozen times and having been fussed over and sewed on for hours, it is
finally ready to perform. It may be too late to catch Nica but we haven’t given
up yet.
On the opposite side of the personality spectrum is Cobin, the superstar of the
day. With no extra attention, Cobin made homemade cinnamon rolls, put together
a model V8 engine, played with his sisters, read to them, and put them to bed,
made Mac and cheese for everyone for lunch, helped with the spinnaker, and
created a flier to start a boat cleaning service when we reach the Marquesas.
Oh – and somewhere in there, he scrubbed the toilets and cleaned his room. He
had a great day and so did there rest of us because his cinnamon rolls were
spectacular! He wanted to make a special dessert for St. Pat’s Day so spent
last night scouring my cookbooks and decided on cinnamon rolls. I’m hopeful he
will make them again, but not too soon. He kept telling us that each one
contained 800 calories.
The girls also had a good day. They managed to convince all the adults on board
to wear green paper clovers for at least part of the day. They played baby
panthers for a while (I got to be the panther trainer) and we had a
non-traditional game of charades. Non-traditional in that Tully and Marin just
made up random sets of words (Ex: Unicorns and Princesses Know How) and gave
arbitrary words and syllable counts and then did various body movements and
facial expressions and got increasingly frustrated when we couldn’t figure them
out. My personal favorite was when Marin did three totally unrelated words
(nature, clouds, “anything”) with the same action of pointing vigorously off
into the distance. It was enjoyable at some level although I’m not sure John
and Sunil are anxious to play again.
I was laughing all morning about an email I received from Ulrike, on board the
German boat Seaside. She and I had been corresponding about workouts on board
during the passage. I told her about some of the workouts we are doing and
mentioned one of the exercises called Russian deadlifts. She wrote back and
said, “P.S. What are Russian deadlifts? We don’t have any Russian people on our
boat – especially not dead ones :)”
Greetings to Turner and Lulu who are now watching and cheering us on! Marin and
Tully rushed inside when they heard you were cheering – they thought they could
see you somehow and were disappointed that it was just an e-mail.
Hi to Uncle Dick, our oldest fan. We helped him celebrate his 100th birthday in
October and know he is sailing with us in spirit although we’d rather have his
whole person. Tully told me that when he turns 183, he will be the same and
still have that cart to help him walk. She also told me that he told her that
he can’t remember what he looked like when he was a baby because it was a long
time ago. She knows a lot of things about Uncle Dick!
Early birthday wishes to another fan – Kay Pieper Brown, who told me she
doesn’t bleed orange, which is a relief to all of us! I hope we make landfall
on your birthday which means we will be on land in time to celebrate my
birthday on March 23!
If anyone wants to give me a birthday present, just write me an email at
lara233@gmail.com and describe any memory you have of Tully or Marin (obviously
this only applies if you know them). As many of you may have heard, we had 8
out of 11 of our bags stolen out of our rental car in Ft. Lauderdale on our way
down here. The only irreplaceable items were journals I had kept for both girls
since they were born. I had just filled Cobin’s and left it at home. So, if you
have any memories you’re willing to share, or even just messages of goodwill, I
will put them in my new, digital version for them and they will know that
people other than their mother love them enough to write an email 🙂