Carrot Flowers

The sea is deep blue but when the sun hits the crests of the waves I can see aquamarine. Color has always been the biggest illusion of this world. An objects color is a reflection of the only color an object can’t absorb. So actually doesn’t it make more sense to say that the object is every color but the color we see it as. From now on I’ll say that the sea is; red, orange, yellow, green, and violet. So are my eyes, the same as the sea.

Salt, thick like snow, covers everything. And it reminds me of winter. And snowflakes. And fire.

Its cool to think about how we are sailing from summer somewhere into winter somewhere else. Sailing straight across the division of this earth, the equator. Sailing to that point that is an equal distance from the North and South Poles, and traversing past it from one hemisphere to the next. Sailing into another realm where things down there flow in opposite directions.

Here we come. Three soggy bodies and a soggy boat. We are starting to reek. Juniper is caked in pungent odors I can’t run from. I think it’s our lack of showers mixed with damp everything and rotten food and fallen fruits.

Waves have found and captured each of us on our bunks. Sometimes through slow and steady drips and other times a direct wave plants itself into our berths with all its water at once. When this happens I imagine that the sea just wants my attention and I say to the sea, “Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten you. How could anybody, possibly forget you?”

My fridge, the brand new one, isn’t working as of yesterday. If anybody reading this knows Wally on Oahu. Ask him if he has any tips. Tell him the manual said to only use marine batteries but I plopped Daleco AGM batteries (non-marine grade) in just before leaving and only read this fact in the fridge manual today. Tell him to email me, on my sea email, if he can.

Me and Juniper and fridges! Cursed.

I went into my closet last night and everything was soaked. I have a lot of impractical things in there like, floral party dresses, in case I ever want to get gussied up. But you should see the pile of impractical things I shipped to my parents house in order to make room for the guys- cowgirl boots, high heels, curlers, sequined dresses. Yep I crossed an ocean with that stuff. Haha. Juniper is my home so everything under the sun is on her.

Our watch schedule is so rad that I have time to investigate things like my closet.

I made it so we do 4 hour-long solo watches during the day and 3 hour-long solo watches at night. This gives us 6 hours off at night and 7 or 8 hours off during the day. Depends where you fall on the schedule.

I’m catching up on everything out here. Mostly sleep. I sleep so well at sea.

We got Juniper moving at 6 + knots close-hauled and got so easterly of our waypoints that we now get to head on a reach. We are flying. 7+ knots with a double-reefed main and staysail.

I am trying not to rush down to the inter-tropical convergence zone (ITCZ). It is currently around 7-9N. There is a lot of activity there that is being agitated by a storm that hasn’t gotten strong enough to be given a name yet. I prefer a storm with no name. It means it lacks power and guts and charisma. Name or no name that storm is causing some squally chaos in the ITCZ- lightening, thunder, big waves, oh my!

I am not sailing through lightening if I can help it. I don’t even know if the boat is grounded. I will have to stuff all electronics in the oven and then confess all my sins and make deals with God for the duration of that storm. Then once the storm passes I will sit there regretting the deals I made.

The crystals on the transducer are still out of whack. The depth sounder alarm is extremely over-active. Now I hear it even when it’s not going off, just like Sava. And we hear the same phantom version of it at the same time!

Sava’s camera light and my headlamp also keep going off in flashes whenever they want. The camera light is the craziest. It looks like a damn disco party is happening down below. These flashing occurrences happen mostly when I’m alone on my night watch. I had the 2-5 am watch last night. That’s the witching hour.

Tonight we are eating the Big Eye Tuna that Sava caught. Josh is preparing it with mango and other juiciness. That tuna was strong. She convulsed long after her death. She twitched so much in the bucket that the knife flew out of her body and cut me slightly on my hand. Sava said she moved like this the whole time he filleted her.

I hope she gives us all strength and energy that moves like hers did, beyond death.

And I hope the fish helps to heal my hand. The coffee burnt me so bad that I haven’t had any since I burned it. I’m afraid to make it again. And my hand looks like it’s been gnawed on by a shark.

I’m looking out now at a grey sky but there’s blue beyond it somewhere. Or the reflection of blue rather. We are eating carrots and having conversations that one might overhear small children having. Sava, “Have you ever seen the core of a carrot? It looks like a tree?” Then he bites the carrots edges for me to see. Me, “Have you ever seen the flower of a carrot? It looks like lace.”