New Things

It's been a row of new things on our side, starting with the new moon. The weather has changed a bit, and we have gusts up to thirty three knots, and rain. Previously we had regular trade winds with us for ten days, and could fly the gennaker day and night. During the more unsettled weather conditions, we use the genoa, especially at night. Easy to furl in a reef as the weather dictates.

Also new for us was catching two Dorado after thirty days at sea, both hooked at the same time. Yesterday it was fish and chips. Thomas marinaded the filets in soya and Worcestershire sauce for a few hours and then fried them to perfection. New way of doing fish for me. Today fish and rice. I am frying some filets with garlic and butter, and Jane is doing jasmine rice. I can smell the nutty rice smell drifting into my cabin. As soon as the rice is done, I will fry the fish. Thomas fried some pumpkin fritters, and soon we will be having a little feast.

I also tied new strings on my ukulele. On a You Tube video I downloaded, one question was when to replace your strings. The presenter mentioned that when you can feel the fret marks on your strings, it is time to replace them. I have been playing with the same strings since I was gifted the ukulele by my dearly loved wife about nine months ago. And I play at least a few hours a day. When I removed the old strings, some of them felt like corrugated roof sheets, full of little bumps from the frets. The new strings will take a day or two to stretch in, and will then more or less stay in tune. Part of warming up before I play a bit, is to tune the strings perfectly. And wow, the sound of the new strings just blows me away.

We have finally also moved into a new time zone. The earth is divided into three hundred and sixty degrees, and every fifteen degrees is one hour. Latitude is from east to west, and longitude from north to south. Our time zones are east to west. UTC time is on zero degrees, on the meridium. Around Fiji the time line starts at +13UTC, and goes all the way around to - 11UTC. The time line makes a dog leg shape at Fiji. Try as we might, the earth's diameter does not exactly fit into our square way of thinking. There are also thirteen new moons a year, not twelve as in our Western calendar. To compensate we have to add an extra day every four years. Thirteen is not a number that neatly divides into equal parts. There is also no straight line in nature. Us humans we like to draw straight lines, and divide things into equal parts. Anyways, enough science for the day.

I hope you have a new thing or two in your life. By us the weather has now settled a bit and we are flying our gennaker again. Looks like we will reach the coast of Brazil tomorrow night. We won't be close enough to see land, we will be out on the continental shelf riding the current soon.

Until tomorrow

Paul



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