Friday, November 19, 2010

Day 109

Our second night at sea passed much the same as the first, an exhaustingly rapid rotation of shifts, three hours on, three off, throughout the night.

The weather this far south is nice and warm, the conditions calm, but still we continue the three hour shifts at the helm. Why? Because with no autohelm, trial and error has taught us that three hours is the maximum amount of time we can sit in the dark staring at a dimly lit, lazily bobbing compass dial.

The shifts continue well into the next morning, until lunch actually, as we each try to catch up from the broken night before. Finally the heat of the noon sun beating down on the boat turns below decks into a sauna and sleep is no longer possible. The crew is reunited in the cockpit to douse the floorboards and slather on the sunscreen.

This morning was oppressively hot and still. The ocean, hazy and glass-like to the horizon. We motored, slicing through the placid waters like a lake. The mainsail was set and luffed against the mast in our self-generated headwind. I was fixing myself some lunch when Pete gave a shout from the cockpit. Dolphins! I climbed up on deck somewhat unenthusiastically. We'd been seeing dolphins since the carolinas. What I saw left me giddy with excitement, my lunch forgotten in the galley.



Strolla was chugging her way straight through the middle of a huge pod. There were at least thirty dolphins on all sides of us, cavorting through our wake and lapping the boat, playing and racing and launching themselves to amazing heights out of the water. We shouted and cheered and called out scores to the acrobatic competitors. Then, as suddenly as we'd entered, we passed out of the pod and were once again alone on the wide, wide sea.


Mid afternoon, a spur on the northern coast of Cuba shimmered into view off our port bow. It was a series of islands and peninsulas among which we were hoping to find an anchorage for the night. As we drew closer, a large pink building became visible. A hotel, I speculated. Closer still and we could see the dark specks of people milling around it. We continued straight towards until, about two hundred yards out, we were able to make out the olive drab uniformity of the their clothes and the unmistakable silhouettes of their guns. On one of the outbuildings painted in white letters over the pink facade was scrawled, "Vive Fidel!" Despite the unusual color scheme, this was a military base. No anchorage here.


Just as we'd changed course to leave the post behind us, we got a bite on the lure we'd been trolling. Fish on! Pete reeled it in. It was another Cero, a member of the Mackerel family like the one before. This second one was fully half again as big as the first and would prove to be just as delicious.








The breeze freshened and we picked up speed. Some men patrolling the beach waved to us as we glided by. Our chosen anchorage having been too close to the unmapped military post, we traveled on, scanning the charts and the coast for another likely place to spend the night. The sun dropped and dusk descended. We settled in for another night underway.

No comments:

Post a Comment