Mel Apologizes to the Ocean

Dear Ocean, Mel is very sorry for accidentally littering in you. She had unfortunately forgotten about the 6″ giant googly eyes she had velcroed to the forward deck in an effort to intimidate, well okay, amuse, the other participants in the Georgetown Regatta. Her heart sunk when Greg informed her they were missing this morning. Mel apologizes for putting plastic in the sea. On the upside, you now have awesome huge googly eyes. This will make you, the Atlantic Ocean, more trustworthy to the aliens in space. So that’s good.

Speaking of aliens, her second night on watch Mel saw a giant red comet-like thing, complete with a red contrail and two red-hot jets at the front of its corona, stream across the sky from northwest to southeast. She would call it a meteor, but it took 3 minutes to transit the sky. Mel is really mad she can’t google anything right now. Oh well. It was probably just Ironman.

It is Mother’s Day. Happy Mother’s Day to Jo Belle, Jeni, and Courtney, who are taking care of the mini-Burnetts at the moment! Mel offloaded her kids before she crossed the Atlantic because she is an excellent mother.

Boat stuff: We made 147 nm in the last 24 hours. We ended up hoisting the spinnaker last night and were able to fly it for 12 hours before our wind died this morning. Now we are motoring because the wind is directly behind us and only about 6 kts apparent. Waves are still at most 4 feet. A cheap-looking block from the leechline of the jib fell on the deck today. It looks like something you would get in a knockoff Lego set. “Replace cheap-ass sail hardware” will have to go on the list for Bermuda. By the way, we are loving PredictWind. It’s like having a little weatherman at the nav station. A really nerdy one.