Charm - Nearing Mindelo

Today's wildlife spotting was a big turtle, poking its head out of the sea. So far, we've had a featured creature each day, along with an almost-daily dolphin show. A whale, flying fish, tiny squid on the deck, the turtle, and even a night show of dolphins trailing streams of bioluminescent sparkles.

Our very kind friends from King's Ransom in Valencia, Pete and Niki, gave us a gift bag full of presents to unwrap for every "first." So the kids have had a good time discovering the treats Niki set up for us upon spotting our first whale, dolphin, turtle, etc. They are looking forward to being a week at sea so they can unwrap another.

We took bets on arrival times in Mindelo and all of us were overly optimistic about the wind. We now have 38 miles to go and are only doing 5 to 6 knots so it will be a wee hours of the morning docking for us at best. Wild Iris and Luna are within AIS range as well so we will have a 3 am dock party together!

Another gorgeous, starry, velvety night. Not as many clouds as last night and the spinnaker is behaving better at this wind angle so my watch is easy. Everyone else is inside watching Marin's birthday gift of Harry Potter movies or sleeping. She and Tim are big fans. Tim has read all the books 4 times, one book in Arabic! He keeps asking Marin trivia questions and she is thrilled to have such a huge fan on the boat to talk with about all things Hogwarts.

The kids are doing great. They like being on the boat even when we're at the dock so I'm not sure they are even mildly unhappy about being 5 days at sea. All the things that adults like - eating in restaurantsn, walking around town, etc, are generally things our kids complain about. The girls are really enjoying playing ball on the trampolines (we have a ball attached to an elastic band - it's a soccer training device but works great on the boat) and Cobin plays volleyball and is doing some coding and playing some video games that he normally doesn't get to play as much.

We are also quite fortunate to have the space a catamaran provides. After living on the boat for a year, we are quite well-equipped with boat-friendly activities to keep everyone happy. I do often wonder how the families on monohulls do it. I think they are far more resourceful than I. Kent is always pointing out the things you can't do on monohulls (e.g. Cobin practicing his keyboard). I'm sure you can do them but I'm guessing there are more trade offs - keyboard OR video games, not both. That would be much harder for me than for Joe. I think Kent might slowly be converting to the catamaran side of things, at least for cruising purposes.

We do school every day and I manage to stretch it for most of the day so all of us stay quite busy. I am cooking lots more than I usually do - pizza crust from scratch, lots of veggies and fruits to cut, etc so I rarely have any downtime. The 3 guys have a little time to read when they're not on watch but they are usually trimming sails, inventing new sail arrangements to go faster, solving Tim's riddles, or watching Tim do impossibly difficult workouts and sometimes doing their own.

The watch schedule for the 3 guys is 6-9 am, 9-12, 12-3 pm, 3-6 pm, 6-9 pm, Cobin and I share 9 pm - midnight, then 12 am - 3 am, 3 - 6 am, and it starts again. Each person has 2 shifts - one night, one day, and they seem to more or less get enough rest. The exception is Joe, who sleeps in the cockpit and wakes regularly to check on the rest of us. The shifts rotate daily and every other day, the person getting off watch is responsible for making a meal for everyone. That way I'm not cooking every meal and managing the kids, which would get old very quickly.

It looks like it might be a long night. 35.5 miles to go and winds are dying. But, what's that? A puff, and we are back to a solid 5.6 knots. I am taking advantage of a mellow evening to post a long blog. Thanks to all of you for sending us good wishes and following winds. For this phase of our trip they have reached us!