Excited

Oh I am so excited it'll make it hard for me to write "interesting".

I just took fresh Dark Rye Sourdough bread out of the oven which had been in making process for 35 hours. I so love it when it smells like in a bakery here. So in my midnight nightshift a day ago I started growing the sourdough from my starter that lives in the fridge. One cup of rye and one cup of warm water added to the existing sourdough will produce more of it as long as you let it sit outside for a day. So this night I put some starter aside into the fridge and used the rest to make dough and two smaller loafs of bread from it. I let those two sit and wait for 6 hrs and now in this shift I put them in the oven and just took that yummy fresh bread out. That's what quiet sailing days are for. I am definitely not going to bake bread when it's blowing 30-40 knots.

We're finally back to sailing. Only about 8 knots of wind but enough to keep us going since the waves are not bad. So peaceful and quiet, we all love it a lot. While I was sitting here looking out as I do in my watch I noticed something black in the water. I thought "oh some more trash or a branch" as we're in that area of the ocean where all of that collects. Yes, we do see more here than we did anywhere else. Lots of fishing buoys. So I watched this thing and saw it was kind of lengthy yet it looked rubbery and shiny. Hm, I thought, a bit weird but could only be a small branch. As we passed by in about 50m distance I saw it move. Puzzled I kept on watching it. It couldn't possibly be a snake? Then it turned to the side and I saw a little wing/paw, then its back and finally the little head. It was the first seal for this season! Tiny little seal! Oh my god it made me so happy. There is so much life here, that's so cute. That's why we're always drawn to the cooler waters, the
re's just more going on. Crossing the south pacific there was nothing, not even a bird. Up here, we see dolphins, whales, seals, birds...And whoever passes underneath our boat once in a while as we can dee from the depth sounder who tells us the last measured depth was 7m. Yesterday it was 5.1m. In an ocean 5000m deep. The sounder can only measure up to about 60m. So if a dolphin or seals or whoever passes underneath Alita it will measure that and remember this as it can't measure the 5000m around it. Sweet aye?

Last night was a calm and beautiful night where Marcus and I both said "the ocean smells so nice, so fresh, like cool ocean". That is amazing as usually you don't smell that when you're on the boat, but only if you're in a calm bay. But we were sailing. 1000nm (1852km) away from land. So exciting. I so love days like these. It'll be all calm today, possibly back to motoring, then still calm tomorrow and I guess the last 4-5 days will be the strong wind ones for the final run. So we get to fill up with some energy...