Still in Shelter Bay, Still Vibing, I Guess

Hello! The bad news is that half the sails still aren't up, we haven't moved in weeks, and the only lettuce onboard is of the iceberg variety. The good news is that I've unearthed a cucumber salad recipe, and it slaps hard.

Ingredients:

• 1 cucumber, quartered width-wise then finely sliced
• 1 clove of finely-chopped garlic
• some soy sauce
• slightly more rice wine vinegar than soy sauce (if no rice wine vinegar, apple cider vinegar will do, and apparently is also good for your skin)
• less sesame oil than you think you need
• an uncertain amount of sugar
• a liberal amount of black pepper
• a quantity of chili flakes that you makes you feel safe, yet slightly daring

Instructions:

• Mix everything together and wait a crapload of time. If it tastes bland, you haven't waited long enough.
• That's it.

I've also made some decent fried noodles. If requested, I can give equally vague instructions for those.

The wind dropped for a few days. During that time, it got unbearably hot, but we managed to get the genoa (front sail) up. It involved a winch, a highly-tensioned rope, and dialogue such as, "ok bring it up," "oh no, bring it down," "ok bring it up again," "*expletive*," "actually, down," and so on. It was great fun in thirty-degree weather plus humidity. We need to wait for Paul from the sail loft to arrive to fit the mainsail, which is heavier and needs the battens fitted in. Battens are thick poles of fiberglass that give shape to the sail and splinters to my fingers. I'm very excited.

The sudden absence of wind brought on an onslaught of flies. This at first was a nuisance, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. When you've been deprived of practicing your favourite violent combat sport for almost a year, mass-murdering small, flying insects makes for a good alternative. I've killed 22 flies in the past five days.

Since my last post, I've finished two books. The first was Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan. It's five short stories set in central Africa. It covers themes such as extreme poverty, child trafficking, religious conflicts, and the Rwandan genocide from childrens' points of view. If you want horrifyingly realistic stories that won't cut corners to protect your feelings, this book is for you. The second book was Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong by David Walsh. It's a look into the darker side of professional sports and conveys emotions of cynicism and disillusionment. After these, I decided to take a break from serious literature and watched a season's worth of reality TV.

Friday evening, we stopped by a birthday party held on a neighbouring boat. When Jem said that we would be leaving early and I joked that it was because we were both old, the host looked at me, shocked at my supposed age. I was reminded of a time when, last summer, I was coaching some sailing kids near Mont-Saint-Hilaire and jokingly told them that I walked slowly because I was 70 years old. They replied that I wasn't that old, max 40, then one of them piped up, "you never know though, Asians age differently."

In animal news, last week I found out that the weird sound that sounds like a cross between howling wind and an ambulance siren is in fact howler monkeys. In non-animal news, a megayacht arrived yesterday. It's the size of a small office building.

Jem cut his hair today. We now have similarly-shaped heads

That's about it for now. Something more interesting should happen within a week, but in the meantime, I will take a nap. Bye