Leg 2, Day 15 – The Doris Mysteries
UPDATE: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…the rate at which Oceania shows us her differnt personalities is mindblowing. For the last few days we’ve been battling varying wind speeds, constant soakings and a drop in temperature as the wind cooled against our skin or wet weather gear. Yet last night we rowed through torrential rain and today we are rowing a pan flat sea with no wind and increasingly high humidity.
It’s not a mystery, it’s a fact that everything changes out here, but we have found that we do have a few other mysteries to solve…
The only thing I’m slightly precious about is a good pillow. In all my years of travel, the one thing that is paramount to ensure a good night’s shut eye is the right pillow. Not too hard, not too soft and, for me, not too high. Obviosly this was a concern before embarking on Doris for 6-8 months, so I informed the girls that I would search for my own pillow to take. I found the perfect one. A small travel sized, comes in its own little case, blue and white checked pillow. I loved it. I tried it out in San Francisco before our departure and all was good in the world. However, since embarking on Doris, the strangest thing has happened to my little pillow. For some unknown reason it’s permanently damp! I mean seriously, even if it has been dried in the sun out on deck and then brought back in, before you know it, it is damp again!! So without further ado, we would like to share a few of the Doris mysteries…
– Why oh why is one of our 3 pillows (the small blue and white one) in the aft cabin ALWAYS damp?
– What are the bright lights in the sky that we have seen appear, glow unbelievably bright and then disappear as quickly as they arrived? They are not flares. What are they?
– Why do flying fish only land on Doris at night? Absolutely no fish during the day.
– Where do all the clothes pegs disappear to? There’s really only limited places to hide on Doris, so where on earth do they go?
– The absolute mystery surrounding the 10 minute danger zone. It dumbfounds all of us that regardless of how calm the shift has been, within the last 10 minutes either one or both rowers get an obligatory splash before coming off the oars.
– The mahi-mahi (dolphin fish) have 2 types of jump that they do. One is a beautiful high arcing jump and the other is complete belly flop. Why is this? Most tend to go with the belly flop and we always hear the splash/slap, even if we don’t see it.
– I have started sneezing uncontrollably and feel as if I have an allergy to something. I may be slightly worse affected but all of us are sneezing. Why?
– We spotted a moth flying near Doris and then it landed for a while. What on earth is a moth doing out here over 500 miles from land?
– In Santa Barbara we replaced our grab rails (lines at the side of the boat that we use to steady ourselves during change over) with some new ones that we bought at a climbing shop. The mystery surrounding these lines is that they were taught during the heat of the day and then slackened as soon as the temperature began to fall! Why? This is the opposite to most materials we have come across and was not particularly helpful as night time was when we needed the help the most!
– Where are the choc chip bits in the chocolate chip desert??
– For some random reason we keep finding a solitary red gummy bear in the footwell. Why?
These mysteries and more, constantly confuse us out here on the almighty Pacific. Clearly we have too much time on our hands…and are heavily sleep deprived, but we’re sure you would all be just as confused as we are!! x