June 23rd, 2009

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A good non-fat Tuesday, June 23rd

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

At 15.10 Eastern Daylight Saving Time I was at 32.29 N 68.35 W with 190 miles to Bermuda.

All day and last night the winds have been faint and the waves/surge big. So, it was hard to make much progress, slatting sails in the bumpy surface left from the gale force winds. Now, the conditions are much better. The wind has picked up and the surface flattened out some. I am sailing with full main and a poled out 140%. With the wind from the beam, the South. This 140% genoa sail is a Frisian Gaastra sail, I bought from Bacon Sails in Annapolis, it is a used sail. Any name ending with “stra” is a Frisian name. Veenstra, Zeilstra, Boukje Dijkstra, etc. Also any names ending with “ma”, Miedema, Oukema, etc. and lastly names ending with “ga”, Wieringa, etc. and the most common Frisian name “de Vries”. That is my mother’s maiden name. The Frisians have their own language, yes, you guessed it, Frisian. When my mother would get together with her parents, siblings, we were completely left out, when they talked their Frisian. It has a lot of words much more similar to English than Dutch. Friesland is just a province now in the North of Holland and around Hamburg, Germany, Ost Friesland, they still speak a closely related language. You will get to read a lot more about Friesland in my future postings when you and I will be sailing the lakes in Friesland, next summer, and visit the mast and block maker shop my mother grew up in. I blame my sailing madness on my Frisian mother.

I took a cockpit bath, about time. The rough conditions in the previous days made it impossible. No luck on the trap line yet. I am salivating for a fish.