“The Minnow” ARC 2005 Atlantic Crossing

 

Mike’s Exciting Day 4 Update!

 

Bob is 50 years old today!!!

 

Happy birthday to you,

Happy birthday to you,

Happy birthday dear Bob,

Happy birthday to you.

 

He’s 50 years old today! That’s really old. Old enough to be a grandfather. But he doesn’t seem any more senile than he has been for the past 40 years. Serge made him a special birthday loaf of bread. And a special birthday piece of fish. And I made him a special birthday chocolate cake. We figured he would be pretty depressed being that much older than us.

 

Scenic Photographs:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On to sailing. Lighter, light, some, very nice. That was the wind today. We finally got moving. We put up our biggest spinnaker and were going nearly as fast as the wind was blowing. For you sailors out there, we did this with an apparent wind angle of about 90 and a true wind angle of 140-160. Good wind continued for most of the day. In fact around 11:00pm we had to take down the biggest spinnaker (which David has dubbed “Whomper”).

 

With Whomper down, we put up the next biggest spinnaker and continued into the night. OK, OK, I was downstairs reading when all the spinnaker-changing activity took place. But I did come up and hand them a flashlight at one point.

 

One thing about this big sail is that someone has to be watching it almost all of the time. Most people don’t use the autopilot with a spinnaker much. Well, Bob and I use the autopilot almost always, and the other three have begun to come around. Not only can we be a lot lazier using the autopilot, so far none of us can keep the speed up as well as the autopilot. It’s hard to argue with more speed and less effort.

 

Yesterday there was a lot of book-reading going on. Today there was more sailing. Imagine that.

 

This morning was very nice eggs and fruit salad (thank you very much David), at noon fish, birthday bread, and green salad (je-ne-se-pa? Serge), and tonight was fried chicken and fried potatoes (Mom still cooks potatoes and chicken better than me durndoggit). Don’t worry. We had plenty of our “Four C’s” (cookies, cakes, colas, and candy) all day long.

 

Arts and Entertainment:

 

There was some piano playing, but it’s a little more difficult to rock and roll on the keyboard as the boat rocks and rolls more.

 

The highlight was “Bob’s Party Mix” blaring on the boat-wide stereo from 8:00pm till the wee hours. “Bob’s Party Mix” is a collection of several hundred unrelated tunes. Some of the favorites were “I Am the Frito Bandito,” “Stars and Stripes Forever,” “I Feel Pretty,” “Whisky in a Jar,” and “Smoke on the Water,” and the theme song from “MASH.”