Which is why, on Thursday morning, August 14, a shout went up as we spotted the southwest coast of England, and it couldn’t have come soon enough, at least for me.

Although, like with Dick, aka Ricardo, our passage was blessed with yet another enthusiastic and helpful crewmate, Steve, who arrived from Boston on Tuesday, August 5th, only to be fast-forwarded through a shower and coffee, before being impressed by Juanona’s captain. Within three hours we were heading out to sea.

Steve donned his special blue shirt

and later presented us with a book of poems from him and Katie.

It took just a bit before Max realized Katie had personalized the cover with a recent photo of Juanona.

With clear skies and some minor (thankfully) head winds, we motor-sailed along the length of Sao Miguel until we could turn north for our passage to England.

After relaxing a bit,

Steve introduced us to his grandfather’s ditty bag;

and, he meticulously demonstrated the how-to of the old sailing art of whipping lines.

Since life at sea can be snoozeville at times, i.e., BO-ring, (again, Sailor girl writing) and, since Steve must have seen a comotose look starting to creep across my face, he asked me if I’d like to do some.

So, now I can add whipper to my resume, and, if we’d been out much longer, I can safely say more than lines would have been decorated with thin, waxy string…

There are times when all you do is bounce on a boat, and, thanks to tropical storm Bertha, the fast miles we covered were primarily due to being bounced up the Atlantic Ocean to England.

And, just so you can get a feel for what I mean, here’s a composite of some sea days…

This meant adjusting the number and size of sails we had out.

I smartly kept watch from the cockpit to make sure our snack bin below didn’t overturn or get too jostled (the snickers bars took exceptional watching, I found) while Max and Steve were either reefing the mainsail,

setting the staysail (a smaller one between jib and mainsail),

and, at one time, prepping the drogue (something to toss off the back to reduce boat speed and help keep the stern perpendicular to the waves),

then deploying it, which was the fun part.

Again, I safely watched from the companionway as the spray started to coat Juanona, and I began to realize I should probably slap another half of a seasick medicine patch to my head. This also contributed to my sleeping A LOT, which then contributed to Max and Steve not having to hear my ‘oh, dang!’ as yet another body part became indented by some previously innocuous, but now lethal, piece of Juanona.

Due to our being on designated watches every three hours from evening (8p) until early morning (8a), you typically grab sleep during the day…

which also means, if you’re the one up, you can dress up the sleeper however you want.

At times there are some interesting events at sea, and one of ours was the pee pot episode. No photos but just imagine one crew member doing the early-morning ritual of emptying the pot while another crew member gets up to use it without realizing the most important piece of the composting head isn’t there.

Thankfully, no harm was done but suffice it to say it did require an extra thirty minutes of clean-up…

On August 10th, halfway to our designation, we decided to have cocktails, so we opened up our cans of Schweppes ginger ale and toasted our not being bounced out into the ocean’s cold waters.

Then we returned to enjoying the bouncing seas once more on August 11th… (note the lovely swaying towels)

Max occupied himself by inventing his coffee runway to hold the all-important caffeine vehicles on the stove.

The bouncing and swaying and grabbing every handhold was pretty much the norm for most of the trip, which is why it wasn’t a surprise when I caught our GPS one day clocking at 12kts.

Just so you know, we are aware of what’s coming our way, thanks to the Internet access via the satellite phone. Every morning at 9a Max checked and analyzed the weather.

And, most of the days it showed nice, strong winds (thanks to Bertha)

with accompanying lumpy, rolling, sloshy seas.

One of the true marvels to me is our AIS (automatic identification system). It takes (almost) all of the fear of running into a much bigger ship than us in the middle of a dark night. By broadcasting its course, its bearing to us, the CPA (closest point of approach) and timing of that (TCPA), size and speed,

we could easily avoid it and vice versa because we also transmitted our location as well as received theirs.

The only concern was when the white triangle turned black;

but, I had their number to contact via our VHF radio if I REALLY became nervous.

As the night turned to day

the tanker’s silhouette

brightened to full color as morning approached. And, I relaxed my sweaty grip on the microphone’s PTT (push to talk) button.

Because life at sea can be a bit uninteresting (sailor girl’s take on it), you can look for ways to spice it up, which is exactly what we did on August 12th.

And, yes, we were a bit punchy by our seventh day out…

Sometimes I didn’t have to find something to make the days and nights interesting. It just happened, such as hearing yet another humoungous SPLAT! against the hull, peering into the cockpit where Max was on watch, and seeing him perched on the seats to avoid a rather large dump of salt water landing in the cockpit.

By the time I got the camera on it, the foot of water had sloshed and drained down to less than half that.

But, the fun wasn’t over, because I became complacent and, after checking on Steve above, I ducked below without closing the hatchway cover and, yes, sure enough, another BANG and there we go… several gallons of salt water flew below.

The saving grace was that now the boat was really clean below because of all the applying of precious fresh water along with the mopping and wiping I had to do to eliminate it. FYI: These episodes are called pooping, which to me was the perfect description.

We didn’t see many ships at all until our approach and entry into the English Channel, and then it was as if we were on an entrance ramp trying to cross two lanes of traffic. It wouldn’t have been so hairy if they were our size, but, as Steve and Max related (I was asleep below), these were BIG ships.

On our ninth day at sea we entered the English Channel

and toasted with coffee our entry into historic Falmouth Harbor (YAHOO!!!).

Within three hours, we had picked up a Visitors’ Yacht Haven guest mooring, checked in with customs and the harbor master, SHOWERED (we again followed our pattern of one every five days…, and, Carolie, yes, I was slack on the clothing changes…) and proceeded to R&R while the activity unfolded around us.

With the passing of a quick rain shower, a rainbow appeared and all we could do was gaze in thankful awe

while we spotted land all around us and we weren’t bouncing!

For the next two days we enjoyed getting our land legs while strolling along the seaside street of this charming village.

Friday morning we awoke to the harbor master asking us what our plans were (signed on for almost a week) and issuing an invitation from the boat we saw picking up a mooring behind us the night before.

Not being quite certain if it was a joke or not, we weren’t sure if we should hop in our dinghy and drift downwind to Scorpio Lady; but, Nick, captain of said boat, saved us the embarrassment and dinghied over to formally ask us aboard for eggs and bacon and coffee with him and Jim, a friend from Norfolk. It didn’t take more than one second before we all said ‘Sure!’ and off we went for our very first eggs+bacon breakfast since we left Maine June 6th, and, boy, did they taste good.

We contributed melon but never got around to it

but did have a wonderful time sharing easy conversation with these two old friends (Jim had been sailing with Nick every summer for a week or so in the past 12 years).

Friday night was our official celebratory dinner, which we began with champagne toasts with a bottle Steve managed to bring

followed by a dinghy ride into town to check out the scene and where we met Clint, aka Mr. T., and his other costumed friends (Falmouth Week hosted a wild costume party) at the Cutty Sark Bar. They just reinforced the friendliness of this enchanting town as we toasted being amidst friendly folk.

We managed to grab a reservation at a South African restaurant, Amanzi, owned and operated by this great couple, Carolyn and Ian.

A sweet young waitress, Gallia, who announced she was new to her job, was also South African. I asked if she knew Johnny Clegg, one of my favorite musicians and, frankly, a hero to me having formed and toured with a mixed band in South Africa during apartheid.

Well, my mouth dropped open and kept doing the jaw drop when she softly said yes, she knew of him… she was his godchild. OMG, it was as if I had met Paul McCartney’s god daughter. Of course, having the Mala Mala (translation: Crazy) drink helped with my dopey, smiley gaze.

Anyway, we had an amazing dining experience and promised to be back.

[which Max and I did our last night in Falmouth. Like Tasca in Ponta Delgada, we could see coming here at least once a week and we may possibly return by train this winter it’s that wonderful.]

Returning to our mooring, we decided the night wasn’t over yet, and we proceeded to sip some port (again, brought by Steve) with some Cornish cheese and grapes.

More toasting…

and, the dancing began (poor Steve, I think he thought he’d escape this…).

The next morning Max dinghies Steve to shore for the start of his trek home,

and, with calm seas no bouncing was to be had.