FIRST BIG CROSSING: Day 7

24h - 101 nautical miles

I time my climb down the ladder to coincide with the swells...
and swing like an Orangutan from hatch to handhold.

Kai and Hunter are asleep in the sea berth. The main cabin is a disaster, as it is every morning after night watches end. The settees have been turned into sea berths and are overflowing in a jumble of tangled children and various layers of foul weather gear and books and stuffed animals and needlepoint and a hundred half made projects of yarn and beading. The sink is full of unwashed dishes from midnight snacks, stray oranges have escaped from the giant bag that we bought in Cabo. I rub my eyes and resolve to clean it all for the 900th time, knowing it will be like this again in thirty minutes.

Outside, is a world of grey. The sea and sky have lost their Gaugin hues. The grumbling swell and the shades of pewter put you in mind of a summer's day sailing in the Strait of Georgia. Only the flocks of turquoise/blue flying fish bursting from the waves and gliding in impossible, airborne aptitude, before disappearing again beneath the splash and spray- reminds you that you ain't in Kansas anymore, Dorothy, and this adventure is A LONG way from over.

Looking at the clouds, I know Jon will once again be forced to spend the day puzzling out our battery amps and voltage dilemma...

I need to make us coffee.

I find the kettle, stashed, under a blanket where I have stowed it so it won't kill one of my children, in the event it launches from it's usual stowage place.
I look at every  unsecured object  on the boat with suspicion, these days.
"Where could this go wrong?" I ask.
Because if it can-most likely, it will.

The gimbaled stove swings like a mad trapeze artist.

Winds are still light and variable so we veer and yaw on a fifteen foot swell running about every ten seconds.
There are also, other, less predictable waves, out here running from a  low pressure system to the North of us.
This is just the beginning of the trades, the further into them we go, the less all this will happen and the more stable things will become.
I'm looking forward to that, I must say.

So, secure the kettle to the stove with metal rods so it won't attack anyone.
The bean jar is empty...begin the search for more beans. (Bags and bags of coffee are stowed everywhere on the boat, beans make excellent packing to help things from rattling-plates and cups and secreted-away bottles of wine.)

I open a cupboard and not only the beans but the cups, the plates and the bottles of wine all launch at me as the boat jerks and rolls in a frenzy.
I react like Inspector Clouseau being attacked by his man, Pink.
I pray and duck, I fend with a stuffed teddy bear.
I shove the rolling wine bottles under a blanket and wrangle the hand grinder and the beans into a small corner of the companionway...
where I crouch, like a refugee, carefully pouring my beans into the grinder.

I manage.