The forecast showed that the southwesterly headwinds we experienced yesterday morning would be light and short lived. They were neither. The wind slowly increased as the day progressed, and after dark last night it was up near twenty knots with a good sized wind chop. It got a bit uncomfortable aboard the mighty Starr heading directly into it at nine knots, but at least we were dry in our climate controlled wheel house. I'm glad I wasn't aboard Keith's Cal 20. I'm sure his evening was worse than ours. The wind started to clock and die off just before I came on watch at 1AM. There is still some left over slop this morning, but it is disappearing quickly.
Surprisingly, the updated forecast models missed the strong southwesterly completely. It showed light northerly winds and small seas. That's the first time in a long time that we've seen the models get it wrong. The models are calling for a flat calm day today. We hope they are correct.
The rougher weather yesterday made it harder to see rubbish in the water, but we saw a lot less than we expected. It was pretty clear that we were passing through an area of far lower garbage density than the day before. We haven't seen any garbage in the past hour since it got light this morning. Perhaps the worst is behind us.
We got two dinners out of our mahi mahi. Don made an excellent lemon/butter/caper sautéed mahi the first night and a tasty fish soup the second with onions, potatoes, shrimp, ham hocks, and clam broth. We've had a couple of days of no fish. Perhaps it is time to put the line out again?
Don and Sharry had a flying fish come in through their open cabin window the night before last. It got stuck on the window sill and didn't make it into bed with them. There would be a better story if it had.
We haven't seen any ships for more than a day now forcing the crew to create its own entertainment. Books are being finished and sudokus completed. We've solved most of the world's problems during our night watch discussions so we're spending more time listening to podcasts. Hidden Brain is a favorite.
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