Bugs!

Tuesday 4/2/13    12:00
18 26.344 S
92 16.954 W
http://maps.google.com/?z=4&t=k&q=loc:18 26.344S 92 16.954W

Well our latest dilemma seems to be bed bugs.  They must have come aboard when we were stocking the boat in Puerto Montt.  It is a little hard to do much about them when you are in eight to ten foot seas.  We have bagged up most of our bedding and are boiling the last remaining sheets and vacuuming the cushions.  We will keep this up for a while.  So if anyone was wondering if Barb was getting lonely out here for so long, it is not a problem she has lots of new friends that really love to sleep with her. I tell her that those are just little love nibbles from her new friends but she does not see the humor in that.
The sailing here is really different than sailing against the wind in the Atlantic.  It is all down wind.  Most of the time we are using just the big jib poled out.  We are faster with that then using the main and the big jib because the main shelters the jib too much.  The last few days we have been doing over 150 miles a day which is really great for this old boat.  It is quite the ride though, in these eight to ten foot seas.  The worst part is the frequency of the waves is very short, so the boat is really fishtailing around as the waves shove the stern this way and that.  The autopilot is constantly fighting to keep up. The feeling of speed is almost scary at night when you are surfing down the waves at over eight knots with the glowing phosphorescent foam all around the boat. Yesterday I was on the bow moving the pole from one tack to the other and Barb was in the cockpit pulling sheets when a wave hit the rear starboard quarter dumping six inches of water into the cockpit and throwing me against the life lines.  So staying in the cockpit isn’t always the driest place to be.  The lack of sleep is very wearing, it makes doing anything at all a chore.  Just moving around the boat is a lot of work.  Doing dishes is a two person job, because you can’t set anything down or it ends up flying across the cabin.  So one person washes the other has to dry and stow them away.
20 days done at least 20 to go, half way, if the wind holds.