day 11

"The Minnow" ARC 2005 Atlantic Crossing

Mike's Exciting Day 11 Update!

This morning we continued on under the solent and mainsail. This afternoon
we continued on under the solent and mainsail. This evening we continued on
under the solent and mainsail. We have good wind today, but it's coming from
the wrong direction.
The right direction would let us put up a bigger sail and go faster.

The solent is an interesting sail. It's easy to put up, easy to pull in.
It's almost as tall as the mast - probably 60 feet tall. But it's not very
wide at the bottom and has a point on the top. It's good for strong winds
but doesn't catch enough air for us to go fast in most medium or fast winds.

There's not much sailing to be done when the winds and course don't change
and you are using the mainsail and a small jib (solent). So we cleaned, and
napped, and cooked, and read books, and fixed a few things. That was a
welcome change from the past few days of disaster-management.

Nothing important broke today. But tonight the generator quit working. We're
not sure if it's broken bad, or just playing with us. However, it's a
potential lifestyle-changer for us. On the Minnow we use a lot of
electricity. We can run an engine in neutral to generate electricity. Water
is the concern. Fresh water.

And we use a lot of fresh water. The water maker makes about 27 gallons of
freshwater per hour from saltwater (uses some sort of alchemy I guess). But
it takes a lot of electricity so the generator has to be running in order
for us to be making water.

We will attack the misbehaving generator tomorrow. And we will do without
our evening showers tonight. This sailing business is hard.

Today's Nautical Term:

Onboard the Minnow we speak a number of different languages. Serge speaks an
odd version of Franco-klahoman. David speaks standard Ausie-American. Jim
speaks the Californian version of "biz-speak." Bob speaks . well Bob is in
his own world. Of course, I speak normal daggum English. But we are all
drawn together by the common language of sailors.

Nautical terms are pretty cool actually. For instance, the left side of the
boat can be called (1) left (2) leeward (3) windward (4) weather (5)
aweather (6) port (7) upwind (8) downwind (9) larboard (10) the other side
dammit (11) right (if looking at the back of the boat) (12) this side (13)
that side (14) or the sunny side. Not many things in life offer that kind of
choice.

They get even cooler in use. Picture Bob with a rope in his hand, and a
deer-in-the-headlights look while David instructs him on where to tie it.
While there are 14 choices listed above, David will normally use only 6-8 of
them on any one instruction. David will normally increase volume as he picks
different options from the list to see what Bob might or might not respond
to.

Now that's really cool to watch.

Back to practical matters. You might think that David's (the yeller's) use
of number 10 would be effective and highly used in this situation. That's
making the incorrect assumption that Bob (the yellee) would make any sort of
move towards one or side of the boat as he attempted to process the
instruction. In fact, it's actually the yeller's random and loud use of the
complete list of nautical terms that results in the best communicative
performance among the crew (the team).

Communication requires at least two parties. Not only does the yeller have
an important role on boats, the yellee must also cooperate for efficient
teamwork. Most important for the yellee is to keep doing whatever it is he's
doing when the yelling stops.

When nautical communication involves the use of three or more team members,
it gets even more fun and exciting. For example, when using four people to
accomplish a nautical task, for every yeller, there are up to three yellees
(possibly less if some of the team are not listening). If two crew are
yelling, then there are actually up to six yellees (of course making the
assumption that sailors can yell and listen at the same time). It's just
plain fun.

Oops, I got all excited and strayed. Today's nautical term is "potato
drawer." David is a son-of-a-sailor and has sailed a lot. We learn a lot of
new nautical terms from him (sometimes he even spices them up
Australian-style for us). Today he taught us the nautical term "potato
drawer." The "potato drawer" is a drawer where boat parts are kept. On this
boat we keep boat flags in the potato drawer. It's also the drawer that had
potatoes in it until we ate them a few days ago. Hmm...

Fishing Report:

We brought in a nice dolphin today. And we broke the line on another nice
dolphin. We need to put super big line on the other pole, but we've been to
busy (lazy).

Arts and Entertainment:

Today we broke out the piano once again. Serge put it on "player piano" mode
for awhile and we had a nice concert. Then Bob and I donned headphones and
entertained ourselves. Baritone solos and practice also continued (to keep
people inside).