Make the Most of It

We are finally nearing land, it has been 15 days at sea, we did have a small break in French Guiana, but we never touched land, we anchored for one night and moved on toward Trinidad, where we have booked the marina for 4 days, there is some real stress now about Intle Breeze's ever whitening underbelly as the last thing we need is a barnacle infestation which will cause osmosis, as every sailor knows this would be one of your biggest nightmares and expenses.

I am sure you can all imagine how ready we are for some tera firmer under our feet, but we remain calm and in control, we still have at least 24 hours to go.

We have had many days of wonderful champagne sailing. We have been able to use either, the still injured Mr Oxley or the main sail and genoa depending on wind. The beautiful winds with no fishing boats messing with our heads, and easy swell, life is bliss on the water, even though land was calling for some, but me, I am happy being shoeless and braless, with crazy curly hair and not a care in the world.

Then of course it happens, as it always does..... the dreaded doldrums decided to join our 5 man party, and all sailing came to a halt and we had no choice but to turn on the peace killer. (AKA the motors) Every now and then during the night the wind would come up ever so slight and we would get the main up in a hurry, but sure as the stars shine it would disappear again before sunrise and there was the return of the peace killer.

Some of the brutal truths of the doldrums is that they mysteriously unravel your mind, it is rather bazar to be honest, because the horizon remains, everything continues as it does, shifts, meals, sleep etc, however that extreme calm and feelings of nothingness, start to distort perception. It truly is the weirdest thing. Our situation is also a little elevated as we are possibly nearing a time that we will need to part ways due to visa circumstances and not our choice. So we do have some deep thoughtful moments happening, questioning the next phase of our journeys ....... Well what to do? Fall into the pits of the ocean and drown OR jump in and enjoy the moment, we of course spent some good time in this rather large and ancient pond, we chose to enjoy the doldrums and the feeling of being in the beautiful blue water, with who knows what around us, and depths that we cannot comprehend, mmmm the need for adventure is real, we can now relate to the sailors long gone, and the craving to explore the unknown.

Since we left the African continent we have not purchased fuel as we have been lucky enough to almost always be sailing and only motor in and out of marinas and anchorages. However, now we only have 38% left in the fuel tanks and as we all know, just like a car that last half seems to just vanish. Yup we are in the doldrums so we need motors as well and aircon, and water, all these creature comforts require fuel.

The heat and humidity out here over the last couple days has been absolutely insane, Eric put the thermometer on the top deck and found the temperature to be over 50 degrees Celsius in direct sunlight of course, so even with low fuel tanks we have put the generator on, so that we can run the airconditioner, but only occasionally in our cabins, so that we are able to sleep and be a little fresh for our wathces, I can tell you even the aircon is battling to cool the cabins. Our ice machine is taking major strain an no longer filling up with ice so we are using very sparingly and trying to bag and freeze as much we can.