Getting Tropix’d!
It is sunny and hot! Blue skies by day, with beautiful clear starry nights. It is so lovely to finally have some sun after a long deprivation of vitamin D in Asia and the North Pacific. There is also nothing quite as special as navigating by stars at night, moving the perspective away from engineered compasses and complex wind instrument figures to looking up is one of the most alluring aspects of ocean sailing. I think each of us longs to feel like a traditional navigator, depending purely on the wind for propulsion and using the sun and stars to navigate. All in all, good times onboard UNICEF.
Leggers are hopping onto the helm more frequently as conditions become friendlier and Dee is continuing to lead her Code 3 repairs with devoted dedication. Those in the galley have been smashing it, with a new form of tiger-style bread coming out this morning.
As Delia commented last night, while admiring the Southern Cross: ‘This is why I paid for this’. It is always special to watch a crew come to realise that ocean sailing isn’t all just seasickness and being thrown around by the ocean, or beasted on the foredeck, but a very unique space where community thrives in a peculiar organic form. A space where individuals spend hours staring at horizons and night skies with time to ponder and reflect away from societal norms and structures, in which conversations of all kinds of calibre emerge. I guess, after tumultuous months of navigating fishing fleets, a lot of upwind sailing, cold and damp it feels a privilege to have open water and be able to relax into a groove under the sun. Uppa leg 7!
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Laz, Dan and the team