May 16, 2024; 136 miles off Georgetown, Guyana, South America
At 0400 a starry night overhead, for a change. With no moon the sky reveals all the stars it can. The Milky Way is directly overhead, its broad band swathing the sky from horizon to horizon. The northern end lays a point forward of the starboard beam, the southern end touches the horizon aft of the beam on port. The constellation called Scorpio is high in the sky on our port beam. No rain since yesterday morning. Grey all afternoon and clearing up overnight. We could benefit from some dry sunny weather – and it looks like that’s what we are getting today – knock wood.
Yesterday’s workshop was something of a survey of the Atlantic slave trade. A subject so seminal to our western world and most particularly as we look to enter the Eastern Caribbean. Some good books on the subject: The Slave Trade – The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440-1870 by Hugh Thomas; Sugar and Slaves by Richard Slater Dunn. This is a bleak story full of horror, with few heroes other than those who resisted. Follow this up with anything by Frederick Douglass and Black Jacks by W. Jeffery Bolster. This latter looks at Black sailing ship seafarers in the age of sail, and its effect on positive community building, and is quite revealing on seagoing and slavery.
At dawn the day comes in fair with some clouds and the Picton Castle making 5 knots under almost all sail. This morning the 4-8 watch set the remaning canvas sails. Good to get them dry. Not many days left before landfall. The Bosun is busy getting us ready. The dory is getting geared up with a mast step so she can be sailed as well as rowed in the sweet blue bays and turquoise coves up ahead in among the reefs. The hard working Cape Island skiff is getting cleaned up as well. The new yard is coming along, all tapered and rounded now. Needs a nice yoke and its ironwork to become complete. Provision inventories – we are OK on basics, but freezers are low and no fresh provisions left from Cape Town, now a long time astern. Looking foward to seeing a stalk of banana or two hanging in the rigging. Mangos, soursop, pineapples, breadfruit (courtesy of W. Bligh and the Royal Navy), oranges, apples, lettuce, tomatoes, fresh potatoes and onions, although these latter have held up well – yams, sweet potatoes, fig banana, drinking coconuts, all soon come.
We seem to have slipped out of the larger current overnight, although we still have a knot helping us along. Looks like we may get back into some strong favourable currents over the course of the day. We shall see. It will be nice enough simply to dry out from all the rain over the last few days. Plenty rain squalls giving us plenty push, but also LOTS of wet. Just passed a lump of a log drifting by with a bird standing on it. The Orinoco River flows into the sea up ahead just east of Trinidad.
