Location: 19° 35.3 S, 40° 48.0 E
Wednesday 12:00, 11.01.2006

At noon on November 1st, the Schooner Maggie B was at 19° 35.3 S, 40° 48.0 E. She was slipping along at 6.3 knots in an easy 10-12 knot NW’er, heading for a turn off the hump of Madagascar, near the French Island of Joan de Nova. We have gone 1761 NM since Cape Town and have 569 to go to Hellville, Nose Be.

It has become hot and muggy and we are looking forward to the beaches of Madagascar almost as much as the lemurs.

Today was one of those very, very routine days at sea that makes the life of a sailor comfortable and steady. Being a quiet day, I called for “The Hat” which means four jobs on slips of paper in a hat, to be chosen by all at random. Vacuum, wash floors, wash verticals, and, everybody’s favorite: The Head and Shower. Hannah chose the short straw, so she was rewarded at lunch with the tiniest flying fish as a main course. The rest of the meal was fresh tuna marinated over night in soy sauce, lemon juice and ginger, followed by stir fry shrimp, onions and peppers over rice. Yum!

Willis and I had been separating trash by the rail and had made a bit of a mess. I got a bucket on a rope to wash it down and caught a wave just wrong and it was snatched out of my hands. I called for All Hands and we did Man Overboard drill. The chart plotter was marvelous to be able to immediately retrace our path within yards. Even so it was astonishing how quickly a bright red floating bucket can disappear. Hannah was on the foredeck with the boat hook looking like Queeg Queg the harpooner in the bow of Starbucks’ boat, all of us being guided by Bori for the final approach. Hannah got it on the first pass and the bucket will live on to do another lifetime of wash downs.

Bori has been given the responsibility of reading a poem a day to us (we have lots of books of poetry on board). Yesterday she read Fernando Pessoa’s “The Tobacco Shop.” It was met with only limited enthusiasm from Frank and Willis, and led to the discussion of what poetry should be. I believe that Pessoa must have been crippled by a bad translator. Today I read Sasha Moorsom’s “Jewels in My Hand’ (”I hold dead friends like jewels in my hand”) to some success, at least with Willis, the self-described cynical lawyer. No doubt poetry slams will be next!

All is well.