General update

Well, the first day was absolute yuckiness. Everyone was seasick and we didn´t eat anything and the water was super rough from saling through channels in between islands. Yesterday was a little better but we were all pretty sick still. Thank goodness for Nora because she was our saving grace and made Top Ramen for dinner. Today got better for most of us. Mama is still sick (this is Grace writing) but she´s slowly feeling better. Everyone had a little bit more food and water which is starting to show in our energy levels. As for marine life, we haven´t seen a whole lot except for tons of flying fish and a couple sea birds. We´re so glad that we´ve only had two bad days instead of last summer´s two bad weeks.

Because nothing exciting has happened (unless you count throwing up and walls of water coming at you exciting), I think I´ll lead you in some Thompson sailing vocabulary. The first one, is the frequently used "gully washer". This means that the floor is just too hot and we need papa to get his 5-gallon bucket full of sea water and drench the decks. An example of this term in a sentence might be, "the soles of my feet are steaming! Gully washer, please!!" The gully washer´s other job is to get rid of ¨gook". Gook seems to consist of salt slime. various small debris, and fish scales from wayward tuna in the night. Speaking of tuna, we really hope to start fishing tomorrow. We can always throw them back if we can´t eat them. Another term is "sucker hole". Nora came up with this as a name for when a small hole in the cloud cover appears and the sun peaks through. Normally, we get all excited and sunscreen up just to have the hole close while Nora reminds us that we´re the suckers for falling for the sun´s trick.

Weather wise, there have been a couple small squalls along the way that bring cleansing rain and shifty wind. The swell is irregular right now which means those walls of water I mentioned earlier were no joke. You see the horizon disappear as an enormous wave comes at you and the boat then floats up and over it and you can literally look down at the people on the other side of the cockpit.

That´s all for today. Au revoir.

P.S. Here´s our position as of now.
Latitude: 16 degrees and 16 minutes North
Longitude: 157 degrees 12 minutes West.


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