Message in a Bottle and Bad Fruit
October 11, 2018
Day 7
Noon Position: 22 40N 132 40W
Course/Speed: S 4
Wind: NNE 8
Sea: NNE 4
Sky: Cear. Cumulus on all horizons but none here.
Bar: 1016, falling
Cabin Degrees Fahrenheit: 77
Water Degrees Fahrenheit: 75
Percent Relative Humidity: 67
Sail: Both genoas poled out, third day. Main with three reefs amidships to dampen rolling.
Noon-to-Noon Miles Made Good: 126
Avg. Miles/Day: 154
Miles since departure: 1,079 (A thousand miles a week is all we ask!)
“I’m glad to see you talking to Monte again,” said my wife in this morning’s note, “because that bit of crazy must mean you’re getting your sea legs. ”
Indeed. Today makes a week at sea, and I’m pretty much back in the groove.
By way of celebrating said groove, I put a message in a bottle and tossed it over the side. A first for me. Thank you Jim Walter for the wine the bottle *had* contained.
Other than date and coordinates, the message reads, “Tell my wife I love her and to get the leaves off the roof before it rains.” Given wind and current patterns here (1,265 nm W of Cabo San Lucas), I’ll be surprised if this one ever washes up.
I’ve done a one-week inventory of the fresh fruit and vegetables aboard. The only veg I brought was five heads of cabbage. That’s it. I am terrible at managing fresh vegetables at sea and have finally figured out that in a voyage of many months … why bother if you don’t want to.
Fruit is a different story. The larder holds two flats of apples, two big bags of oranges, and three bunches of green bananas. The bananas are going yellow all at once, as is their want–no news there. But I was surprised to find that one bag of oranges was half rotten. I wasn’t planning on eating them until the doldrums, as they should have lasted at least a month. Quite the disappointment.
Wind has backed off considerably over the last 24 hours, and it simply refuses to veer fully into the NE as per forecast. At 8 knots of wind, all Mo does is roll and all the poled-out genoas do is bark, so I’ve pulled them and put us on a port tack broad reach. New heading: SE.
Randall. Dude. You should have talked to me about bananas. They give off this gas that ripens other fruit. So yes, if you store them together they will go ripe together. But maybe if you store them separately they wouldn’t do that. And if you store them where there is good ventilation maybe they will ripen more slowly? Stick a couple on deck to see next time.
Separate the oranges as well so the mold doesn’t jump from orange to orange.
makr sure the onions are seperate to the fruits, as they will make the fruit ripen early Michael on Drina
Interesting-my first sailing instructor at OCSC told us while sailing one day about the evils of bananas on boats. Guess that was a fish story. 😁
Oops! “wasn’t” a fish story.
Maybe the oranges would last a. on the at SF temperatures!
Ahhh, the joys of Randall Reading. The juxtaposition of the prosaic and the poetic so beautifully captured inside the bottle with the message of love and leaves.
You need bagbudee – it’s a little bag that removes the gasses from where you store the veggies and fruits allowing them stay fresher longer.