"The Minnow" ARC 2005 Atlantic Crossing

Mike's Exciting Day 10 Update!

Today we endured two disasters.

The day began nicely enough. Midmorning spinnakerable winds came our way. So
up went Thumper (our huge spinnaker that's not as big as Whomper). Light to
medium winds were perfect for Thumper. The boat was moving along well and,
even better, along our desired course.

The boat was a beehive of happy activity. Maintenance, cleaning, we were
almost whistling while we worked. We even had fresh-cooked burritos for
lunch. Early in the afternoon Thumper said "enough" as it split from bottom
to top. That sure fouled up the mood on the Minnow.

So we gathered up the torn spinnaker, bagged it, and put out the solent.
This is not the best sail for these conditions. But it was the best we had
for the conditions, so we carried on. We think Thumper might actually be
repairable on board. We plan to try at least.

The rest of the afternoon went without incident. In fact, spirits were
remarkably high considering our run of bad luck (which was soon to get
worse). David headed up some repair work on Whomper, which had suffered from
being omnipresent in the hundreds of gallons of seawater as we bucketed. The
bucket had ripped some small holes.

A little sail tape here, a little sewing there. OK, a lot of sewing. David,
Jim, and Bob spent about 4 hours sewing some reinforcement at some stress
points. Then we flew Whomper. It's really, really big. And very nice. We
took Whomper down, just before a squall. Considering all, things were going
well again.

And then . Serge began peeling potatoes. I started thawing chicken. We were
going to have fried food for supper. Yay! The preparation process continued
up until we needed to salt the potatoes. After losing a pepper shaker to a
fire on the stove a few days before, we were nervous. We searched and
searched. Then we looked around some more.

Yes indeed, we lost our salt shaker less than a week after losing our pepper
shaker. You know how hard it is to get salt out of the big Morton salt
container without it coming out in lumps. Bloody ashes! Two disasters in one
day. This sailing business is hard.

Fishing report:

This was not a banner day for fishing. Most noteworthy was Bob cutting the
line off of the prop and putting a new lure on that pole. It took the better
part of an hour. Not bad for us.

Arts and Entertainment:

Bob and I spent some time working on the hard parts to "In the Mood" on
baritone. Actually, it wasn't art and it sure wasn't entertainment, so
nevermind.

We did spend another evening relaxing to Bob's Party Mix. Some of tonight's
favs were "Les Miserables" songs, some theme song from "Man with a Golden
Arm," "Whisky in a Jar" (always a favorite), and "Stairway to Heaven."

Unfortunately, we don't have the movie "Paint Your Wagon" onboard.
Fortunately, Bob and I were able to remember some of the lines and even sang
and played a few renditions of some choruses for the others (we both wanted
to do Lee Marvin's lines over Clint Eastwood's).
Favorite line from that movie ... "Whatever the bid is . I double it .
[splat]."