Day 3, en route to Namibia

Friday, 2/1/2019

Happy February everybody!   I was playing Wordscapes this morning, which is how I knew February had arrived.   Can’t get my bonus coins for January anymore.   Spent too much time in January doing other things, I suppose.

Things on the boat are still wet and humid everywhere.  I woke to the sound of the motor running because we lost our wind or what little wind we have is directly in front of us, causing us to be in the dulldrums and requiring us to use the motor.  The wind in front of us is only 10 knots or less, so even if we wanted to tack and use the wind on a close haul, it wouldn’t be taking us forward very quickly.

Brian woke up feeling unwell and I’m hoping the rest of us don’t get whatever it is he has.   We kept to bland foods today for his sake.  Oatmeal for breakfast and stroganoff for dinner with rice.

We ran the motor all day and all night.  It is now 6:30am on Feb 2nd and we have another 100 miles to go to our first port in Namibia, Luderitz.  We’ll be there tomorrow some time, probably at first light.   We may have to slow things down a bit so we don’t arrive in the dark.

As you can probably tell from the name of the port we’ll be going to, Namibia was a German colony at one time.  Bismark, the Emperor of Germany in the late 1800s wasn’t really interested in colonialism, but eventually was convinced to assist several groups, who had gone to the area, protect their development and assets.   It only grew from there.   Soon they discovered diamonds, which increased Germany’s interest in the area.   As with most countries, ownership switched hands back and forth and for many years.  Namibia, after WWI and the treaty of Versailles, came under the control of South Africa, since Germany was required to relinquish all of its colonial claims.  It wasn’t until 1988 that Namibia became it’s own country, but the German influence, I’m told, is still quite strong there.   It also is supposed to have some of the most amazing landscapes in all of Africa.   I’m looking forward to what we will see there.

The sky has been overcast for the most part, although late yesterday afternoon the sun peeked out and it felt like we were in the Caribbean for about an hour.   Shortly thereafter we had a pod of at least a 100 dolphins swim by us.   I went forward to the bow and whistled and sang to them and some of them came back and jumped in the air and followed us and danced for us for a good 10 minutes.   What lovely creatures.  I feel bad that I’ve seen so many dolphins in the past 2 years that I don’t typically get excited when I see them.  But yesterday was good, as they really seemed to respond to my voice and whistles, and I got some good footage on video, which I’ll try to share once we have internet again.

If you can’t tell, dolphins are hard to catch with a camera on a moving boat.  The video is probabaly better, but I couldn’t pass up these partial shots anyways.

Here’s the video I promised.  I’ve always found that whistling or singing to dolphins makes them stick around longer.  It may just be my imagination.  What do you think?

The state of the ocean, of the past 24 hours, has been more like a big lake than the Atlantic Ocean.   It reminds me of sailing in a big tub of Jell-O.   Very few swells, a little bit of wind, definitely no waves of note.   It was nice to see the dolphins, shared above, in this kind of water, as you can see them swimming under and above the water very easily in these conditions.

It feels to me that we have gotten into the groove of passage making.   It always takes a day or two to get in the groove.   The first couple of days everybody is uncomfortable and restless and seasick, but now things have settled down to a rhythm of sorts.  It’s a hard thing to explain, but things just feel right.   Meals are going well, we’re staying on top of our shifts, the shifts aren’t as hard to stay awake on.   It all just feels a little bit easier as we cruise along on the way to our destination.   We haven’t sailed together for nigh on 2 months, so there is bound to be some nuances of getting back in the groove of things, but I feel like now we have.

Happy sailing everybody!   Thanks for following along the adventure!  Don’t forget to subscribe by putting in your email address or follow on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Google+, or Instagram!  Let me know how you’re Living Large by Living Little in the comments below!