Do you care what the weather is up to o’er ‘ere? Check out the local met station webpage. Julian and I discovered yesterday it is fairly easy handle the cats in fierce conditions, although I confess we had the sails completely de-powered. The wind was similar to today’s reading:
$ finger met@sealion.ucsc.edu
Wind Speed: +14.592 m/s (+32.642 mph)
Maximum Wind Gust: +16.376 m/s (+36.633 mph)
Whoa Bessie!
The weather in the Comoros looks pleasant. Almost a constant 28° C. I fly out tomorrow and meet Loubnat in Paris. I hope to update this page as I go, but if not, see you all when I return.
Yesterday’s wind was light but Julian and I raced the auscats out to mile buoy and back while the sun set in a huge pool of orange and purple stripes. Julian said it looked like someone was painting the sky. The boats are amazingly sensitive, so I discovered that fiddling with mast rotation in light air is a bad idea. Basically, 45 and 90 degrees of rotation are the optimum angles for upwind and downwind respectively. The slumbering seals at the buoy were less than happy to see Julian when he swung close and gave them a big toothy grin. Back on land, here’s the recipe of the day: peanut-butter cookies from allrecipes.com.
The sound of bubbles
Under blue skies so true
The rush of sailing
Toward something new
Spring-thaw melts
Where once ice flowed
A watery song begins
Bubbling beneath my toes