Tornados or water spouts?

Dear friends,

Everything keeps going quite well on board.

Yesterday night we play our first game of Nautical Trivial (in English), which I hope will help us to become experts not only in sailing, but experts with the english sailing terminology. Needless to say, Borja and I beat the rest of the crew (though it was thanks to Borja, and not to me).

The past few nights has passed quite calm. The skies are very impressive, few clouds and lots and lots and lots of stars, satellites, and you name it. It feels lika en IMAX, or even better. That and the less amount of boats that we are coming accross, it make us feel like authentic castways. If it wasnt for all the food that is store in every single spare inside the boat!

This morning we finally performed the overdue security/ man overboard briefing. We spent quite some time detailing all the process of what to do in case of MOB. At the end, we all decided that it will be best to avoid it :) and to take all the preventive measures to minimize the probability of the even happening (ole DS!).

Afterwards, Borja followed with another detailed briefing of the contingency bag and the survivial bag that he had put together. The first one, which to me was almost foreign because it was full of tools that I have no idea how to use, seem very complete. The second one it was detailed to the max. He really had put lots of thought into it (despite the captain not liking the possibility of having to abandon the Badum). Borja included sunglasses for those on watch, a kitchen cutting table to cut the tuna that we would fish, to caloric energy bars, a radio to listen to music in the free time, etc...

The timing for these briefings could not have been better because right after lunch we saw two water spouts 2 miles south of us! In 3 minutes, we were all ready with our lifejackts (and life lines), the jib was rolled, and had reef the main. Fortunately enough, the water spouts did not come our way and soon disappear in the horizon. We just got some rain that was very welcome because we had an extremely hot morning.

Our sailing is slow (3 -4 nots) but quite enjoyable so far.

Best regards to all,

Marta

This e-mail was delivered via satellite phone using OCENS.Mail software.
Please be kind and keep your replies short.