Last painting before we sail

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Gettin' Kicked Around by Jenny

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Sailin’ past Kick ‘Em Jenny The swells were as big as a small house, with winds gusting to 28 knots….. I had downloaded Windfinder to my phone and it turned out to be perfectly accurate in its prediction of 25 knot winds (with gusts to 28) for Tues and Wed of our trip.  Yata and I being neophytes to this sort of sailing; we had only sailed on Lake Pepin and the Great Lakes a time or two; didn’t quite know what to expect. We sailed Sunday to Sunday, Jan 24 to 31st on the Chinook, a 42” mono-hull Bavaria yacht with three berths with Kay Hamilton, Dwight Jelle, Jeri and Dave Erickson.  Dwight was the captain and he and Kay have had a lot of experience including racing as well as weeklong trips through the British Virgin Islands and the Grenadines.  Dave and Jeri purchased Kay and Dwight’s Tartan sailboat and have it at the Pepin Marina. So they too have years of sailing experience.   We departed Sunday about 2pm after a couple hours of loading and instruc...
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Tiwi and Shimba Hills

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We finally got out of Nairobi. Ella and Ken's place is so luxurious that it got quite  comfortable and made it literally hard to get out of our comfort zone. Last night we took the big coach overnight bus to the Indian Ocean coast town of Mombasa.  We were picked up by a reserved taxi driver who took us to a short ferry ride and then down the south coast a short distnace to the town of Tiwi.  Ella and Ken have stayed at this little resort, the Swahili House and recommended it so  we landed here this morning at 7:30 am.  The roomrate  includes your own private chef so after a quick coffee we made up a grocery list, encouraging him to cook in the local style which is Swahili-coastal seafood with Arab flavoring. Lunch made us realize that we had hit it big.  Calamari salad and fruit. Humphrey the chef, said he cleans the whole calamari, retaining the 'wings' for flavor, salts and peppers and cuts up.  He pan sears which releases liquid.  ...
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Velocity Made Good

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Yata took his turn at the helm our first full day out and it was a windy grey day with big swells and a boat riding like a herd of stallions over the sea.  Each day of sailing around these islands is unique, from Yata's stormy ride to one day of near calm that required us to motor. Borko,  the consummate sailor never took the lazy route of motoring when sailing was an option.  We would determine our course in the morning and depending on the direction and power of the wind we would sail a direct route downwind or tack back and forth with a side or headwind. The day I sailed we had a side wind and I kept trying to get speed but at the expense of the direction we were headed. At one point Borko explained Velocity Made Good. If you sacrifice too much direction for speed you could actually have a negative VMG because you're not actually getting to your desired destination.  Sailing strikes me as something that is ruled by the laws of physics but at the same time is an ar...
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