Yacht Aditi

Defrosted Meat and deep Fridge/Freezer Cleaning

All going well here since 9am and currently heading 040T at 4-5kn in 10kn wind on our way to hitting the Bermuda-Azores rumb line. Expect to turn toward Horta in under 48 hours when wind swings further west.

Today’s problem child is the chest freezer which decided to stop doing it’s job. I dug out about 16 thawed chicken breasts only to find the whole freezer contents to be covered in ‘chicken juice’ as there was a hole in the bag. Other vacu-pack steaks etc were washed & transferred frozen to a smaller freezer but all of the chicken and quite a few contaminated items went over the rail.

Everything has to be considered contaminated and has to be washed so our sundowner cokes tasted of fairy liquid. Nothing could get the freezer to work over several hours so we thought it was all over but at 8pm it decided it was going back to do it’s thing once again!

Looks like it’s the end of 24/7 t-shirt and shorts. A bit chilly tonight and down to 26 degs in the saloon! So much better than the 34 degs we have been having below decks. Even daytime hits only 29 deg C now. Have seen what we thought were many Portugese Man O’War jellyfish today, however, research shows these to be Velella.

Like their more commonly known distant relative, the Portuguese man o’ war, the Velella float on the surface of the water with their tentacles floating below the water to capture plankton prey using stinging cells called nematocysts. Though they belong to the same subphylum classification as jellyfish they are not true jellyfish, but are hybrid colonial organisms made up of several different types of polyps that serve different functions such as reproduction and defense.

Jellyfish are generally scyphozoans. Hyrdrozoans exhibit a lot of coloniality. One of them is modified to be the float to hold air, the other is modified to be tentacles. They’ve undergone this differential physiology to become highly specialized individuals.

DTG 799nm
Galley – Big batch of thawed beef made into chilli con carne. Baked potato, Canadian bacon & cheese.
Barometer 1028

Leave a Reply