Dear Tanpopo...and jellies and laundry and loufas

Illustrated by Catharine.  There is no dolphin in this story, but Sylvia insisted of course.  The jellies are called Velella Velella for those who want to know.  

Dear Tanpopo…………. 

It is with our deepest condolences that the crew of the good ship Turnagain regret to inform you that we will no longer be requiring your all you can eat sushi services.  You see, we have now been to "the other side". We have harvested the bounty of the sea with our makeshift lure (patent pending - all intellectual property hereby forbidden to be infringed upon without the expressed written consent of Ab-Mac Industries) You see Tanpopo, although your sushi is ….. well it's just ok……… the tuna sashimi we heroically caught and are feasting on daily is simply put …. SUPERB. Tuna Ceviche ? …….Why Yes please ! ……Tuna sashimi ? ……….Don't mind if I do ! …….. Spicy Tuna Quesdedilla ? …………. Why, it would be rude not too! 

As you can probably tell we are getting our fair share of divine seafood and loving every single minute of it. 

We are currently a few hundred miles off the northern California / southern Oregon coast. There has been a remarkable change in the water colour over the past few days - the sea is now a deep pacific blue which is just stunning. Our little jellyfish buddies seem to be thinning out as we get further and further offshore. I'm not exactly a jellyfish expert nor enthusiast  but we kinda think these things are pretty cool mainly based on the fact that have their own little sail that sticks up in the air as they try make their way across this massive ocean. 

Jason & Travis are having fun playing 'good navigator' and 'bad navigator'. Jason gets the boys to drive hard to the south while Travis plays softy and lets the guys head further west. We have however hooked into a really awesome high pressure system at the moment. We continue to watch the weather models and feel confident about the high pressure system through mid-week, but only time will tell what mother nature has in-store for later on in this marathon.  We think we are the southernmost boat in the fleet at the moment and appear to have a pretty good angle as we start to work our way west. Currently we're seeing approx 20 knots of breeze from off our right shoulders and have our A4 kite up and are ripping at a pretty solid 9 - 12 knots in about 6 foot seas. As of this afternoon, Travis is the current holder of our speed record, having registered a whopping 15.2 kts surfing down a nice size roller. 

The boys are trying to maintain a little civility even though it's just us out here for hundreds of miles.  Ty decided to do his laundry off the back swim grid, combined with 50 clothes pegs he has managed to  instantly transform a  gorgeous Beneteau 50 into something resembling a Mumbai shanty town.  Steve-O decided it was time to up his personal hygiene game and proudly marched his way through the cockpit this morning in his skivys to have a shower on the swim grid. Yes - that is the same swim grid used to massacre a few mid sized tuna….. and then to hand scrub Ty's under garments.  Steve decided to get very liberal with not only Travis's Loufah (yes - he brought a loufah!!)  but he also took the little shower dispenser a little too close to his "personal area's" during the rinsing phase of the mission"

That's about it for today - Chef Darin continues to feed us like champions and we are pushing hard to make good miles while we have great breeze at our backs. I know we are all missing our lovely ladies and little ones ….. can't wait to see them in Maui !