Location: 32° 51.5 S, 04° 04 E
Friday 12:00, 08.18.2006

The Schooner Maggie B was at 32° 51.5 S 04° 04 Eat noon on 18 August. We are motor sailing, headed for our point off of Cape Town, heading 136 at 7.6 knots. The wind is variable, but generally South at five knots. Cape Town is 754 NM away. We have come 3063 NM so far and did 191 NM in the last 24 hours.

It is not a great sailing day today. Long, confused swell, no wind, cold and drizzling. This morning we did what any hard core South Atlantic shellback sailors would — we put Jimmie Buffett and his Coral Reefer Band on loud, picked cleaning stations (1. Floors, 2. Walls, 3. Head and Shower, and 4. Vacuum) out of a hat, cleaned up the boat, made blueberry muffins and decided on lunch (a kilo of steamed shrimp with four different dipping sauces — garlic, mustard, curry and spicy tomato). It made for a great morning. On top of that the engine has heated up the hot water and we have made lots more with the water maker, so we all are relatively clean, and even clean-shaven!

Yesterday I got an amazing email. Regular readers will recall that I ruined the keyboard of one of the two Dell laptops by spilling Coke on it. A computer is critical for us to receive weather information, useful to plan routing and nice to have for email. Max fixed the computer by switching keyboards (the backup was not sufficiently complete…) and we went on our way. Yesterday, out of the blue, I got an email from Dell Customer Service saying that they had seen my posting about needing a new keyboard. Could they help and was everything OK? Amazing support. And yes, a new keyboard has been shipped to Cape Town and will hopefully be waiting for us.

Sailing language is sometimes confusing, even for the initiated. Last winter, when we were planning our first leg from Lunenburg Nova Scotia to Bermuda, John Steele, President of Covey Island, the boat builder and an experienced sailor, said, “Don’t worry, once you cross the Gulf Stream, it will be ‘tooks off!’” I didn’t know what a “took” was. Maybe the garboard frapping on the aft buntline holdback (note: nautical gibberish). Actually, “took” is Nova Scotian for “toque,” a knit hat. “Tooks Off” means Spring in Nova Scotia. Well, John, as we approach the Roaring 40’s, tooks are definitely back on.