Lots to think about.

Well, we are making good progress. The wind has held and we are zooming along between 6.5 and 7.5 knots (each knot is 1.12 miles per hour). This is fast for us. Unfortunately, every time I try to read or rustle around to do something, I get a seasick headache and tummy ache. The bonus of this is I'm getting in a lot of stretching, the stainless steel in the cockpit is getting polished, and Brian is cooking me meals. Instead of the small sewing projects and cleaning projects and tasty treat-baking I wanted to be doing, I'm sitting around thinking and praying and napping. It's amazing the things I've been thinking about: planning stuffed animals I could make, trying to remember the fairy tales of Rumplestiltskin and Rapunzel (can anyone remember these, it's driving me crazy. They used to be my favorites.). I've come up with poems I want to write, desserts I want to cook, questions I have for God, and more.

For example. All the wind whistling past and pushing us forward has got me thinking about that verse in the Bible that says something like, "God stores the wind in his warehouses.." It's in either Psalms or Job. I also had heard it translated as bags. Well, I've got it all imagined out. The winds are up in the heavens somewhere in leather bags the size of small countries. In my mind they have tiny tidy seams sewn with sinews and God has a big bellows that he squeezes to force the winds out. They're strategically located at the beginning of all the trade wind locations. Who knows. Maybe when I meet God face to face he'll give me a tour of his wind factory.

Speaking of wind, our whisker pole bent two days ago. Luckily Brian has aboard his No Limitz Skinny windsurfing mast from the 1990s. He has it rigged to pole out our sails for downwind runs. It's not as long as our whisker pole but it works really well. (We should definitely get some free No Limitz gear for this sound bite!)

Another highlight so far has been watching the creatures exploding out of the water from time to time. We get displays of flying fish splashing upward and arcing over waves to land and fly again. We've seen the silver bottoms of manta ray wingtips curling up above the water as they rest. Once we saw a whole herd of tunas jumping out of the water frantically trying to escape a bigger fish. Also, we've found marooned flying fish and 2 small squids on our decks (free bait!). So, there are things to see and do, they're just on a different timing. It reminds me of those really difficult Where's Waldo pictures that were popular in the 90s. When you first looked at them they were a cacophony of color with no seeming organization. The longer you looked, the more you could make sense of the forms splashed around liberally with red and white stripes. After a while, "Boing" one of the little Waldo's would jump out at you. Soon you'd be seeing more and more Waldos and not being side tracked by the red herrings of almost Waldos. This is our ocean. I'll sit and space out and watch wavelets and breaking crests and dips and splashes. All of a sudden, "Boing" out jumps a tuna or a flying fish runs across the top of the water, giving brief glimpses of what's underneath.
Maybe that's how all of life is. It's a huge Where's Waldo picture of confusing, misleading tidbits. The longer you look and patiently persist in finding the meaningful bits, the more you find what you're looking for. I hope you all find what you're looking for this week!

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