Passed the Triangle

4 meter swells on our port quarter = 22 degree slow rolling, as if this big
old girl is lumbering her way across the liquid skin of the earth. The
North Atlantic in winter has a reputation, but the part you don't hear
anyone talk about is the warmth... I've been in shorts and a tee-shirt since
the first day out of Savannah (where I froze) and I washed my wool base
layer and stowed them for the next time we're off Labrador and the Grand
Banks. I just don't need 'em... hell, I don't need my jeans.

The seas are the same gray as the clouds, but the water is the wellspring of
blue dye that all other colors of blue are based on- I just stop every now
and then and look over the side and marvel. If I then go to the other side
and look, it'll be a different blue that's equally magnificent. From the
wheelhouse it looks different than at the bow, and the churned water at the
stern looks like the soft pastel blue that a new mother would be desperate
to paint her baby boy's walls.

But the skies are gray and the whitecaps are keeping pace with us as we turn
for 20 knots and keep roll, roll, rolling along. The refer on the bridge
fell out of its cubby, drawers keep flying open, crap is all over the place-
the seas aren't even that remarkable, it's just that ships don't like to
ride waves on their quarters. Hell, my sailboat doesn't like it any more
than this ship does, come to think of it, and is why I put an oversized
tiller on my boat- specifically for leverage against the resulting yaw. I
will say that it puts me to sleep almost instantaneously, so there's that to
be said for it.

Other than that, Bermuda is behind us, the Azores to the northeast, we've
passed the waypoint where our navigational rhumb line has become a great
circle that will take us the rest of the way into the Med. I like this
captain and mate, my watch partner is incredibly relaxed, and there is a
cadet on this boat who is on our watch and he's a good kid. Already this
trip has gone by faster than the last (thankfully) and it is interesting to
see how much less uptight this crew is... at some point the flies in the
ointment will become apparent, but for now it's OK by me to pretend there
aren't any. Or is that cynical?