Sunday, December 9, 2012

Moonshadow 's Triangle

The Moonshadow update is late today because the Captain was busy with pressing systems issues aboard. Two things we really want working are the refrigerator and the watermaker (which requires the generator to be working). Both were inoperable this morning, but happily, if at the expense of our timely email to Family and Friends, both are back working tonight.

Moonshadow is now about 90 miles south of Bermuda sailing a southeast course. With another day's progress we should be able to steer due south for Antigua. A massive high pressure system is dominating the wind picture over the entire Western North Atlantic which for us has presented head winds and light winds such that we've motored much more that we wanted to do. Last night a squall line passed through our part of the ocean so we put a reef in the mainsail and switched the genoa for a small staysail. Due to the Captain's reluctance to burn more fuel, we've sailed all day today but slowly due to light winds. We are really looking forward to finally find the Atlantic Trade winds by tomorrow.

The crew are all performing well, and are all in good spirits. We have assembled a long list of strange events aboard Moonshadow which we've decided can only be explained by the fact we're in the Bermuda Triangle:
* The stove starter jumped onto the cabin sole and quit working
* The auto pilot began freaking out over an alleged "loss of data".
* Our Watch Commander started behaving like a bad child
* The refrigerator quit
* The generator would only run for 5 minutes then quit
* John's cocktail glass mysteriously disappeared
* Alli's stateroom door mysteriously opened
* Moonshadow's laptop began beeping and freaking out
* A dozen eggs turned up missing
* Cocktails arrived but very late

Best of all the unexplained mysteries was a green flare allegedly sighted by Alli on her 2000 to 2400 watch. But wait, are flares green? This was so unusual, the Captain was awakened and an exhaustive search and rescue mission was quickly organized. We fired up the engine stowed the genoa and drove in the direction of the sighting, all the while scanning the horizon. Eventually we gave up having seen nothing more. The whole exercise was very professionally carried out, but the next morning, upon hearing the news of the flare, Ed (who was below for the whole episode) drew upon his vast experience with the US Navy and casually explained that was most likely the pre-surfacing warning from a US Navy submarine.

Looking forward to what tomorrow brings. Cheers for now!

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Glad to hear you're making good progress in fair seas. Give my best to Ed from Tim

Crumrine said...

Sounds like an incredible trip, I've been enjoying your regular updates. I'm not sure if Alli was the watch commander, but the second part of it sounds exactly like her.

Safe travels.

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