Day 18–Sunday, May 29th

Hi everyone-

Sorry for the delay…it was a strange, interesting day & the ‘blog’
slipped through the cracks. Fridge broke. Ensuing spoilage, literally
and metaphorically. Fish chased our boat (for MILES–I kid you not). It
was SO cute! John called us up to port side, near the bow, exclaiming
there were fish swimming next to the boat. Sure enough, there WERE! Big,
fat, beautiful fish friends. Ranging from about 1 to 3 feet long, they
were brilliantly colored. I saw every color of the rainbow in those
fish. They swam gleefully alongside us for the longest time, sometimes
darting back & forth in front of the bow & sometimes jumping out of the
water. They were playing & showing off for us!

Winds slowly gathered momentum starting in the early afternoon, so we
decided to put up the spinnaker, with a mainsail accompaniment. (Thank
you all for your focused intention & powerful prayer. It worked **in
spades**). In the course of a few hours we went from ‘ho-hum in the
doldrums’ to ‘hang on, we’re goin’ for a ride’ to ‘HANG ON FOR YOUR
LIFE!!’.

Then, another ‘mystery ship’ appeared. This is the third such incident
on this trip; the others we didn’t write about, for some reason. It
first appeared as a distant glow on the horizon. Slowly, we got closer &
closer, until we could distinguish individual lights. We tried to call
them on the radio, but received no acknowledgement. They then turned in
our direction and came eerily close. They seemed to sit still as we
crashed on by in the raging wind storm.

Talk about wind! We were thrashing and crashing and careening until
2:30AM, at which point we all went up to pull down the spinnaker & raise
the staysail. The wind was gusting so hard and the boat heeling (lying
on it’s side) so violently, that it became a feat to just CLING, much
less trying to accomplish a job at the same time (but we did it). Those
winds were so bizarre; they’d move around and around the boat, trying to
blast us from every angle–so as to catch us off guard.

Love & light,
Darla