Abigail and Eliza at Sea

(in their words)

Bahamas to Panama to Galapagos to Pitcairn to Gambiers

March 8 to June 18, 2004

Abby: I don’t like my tight life jacket. The size is for an infant.

Eliza: I hope the water in Panama will be as blue as the water here in the Bahamas. (Actually, when we got near Panama the water turned cloudy brown.)

Eliza: This is my sea bunk. Abby: This is my bunk.

Abby: The blue things are lee cloths. They keep you from flying when Estrela is heeling. Heeling means tipping. Eliza: During this passage Abby slept with her books the whole time.

Abby: My rag doll’s name is Clara and I love my stuffed animals.

Eliza: I made this box to hide my almost-finished needle point canvas so my parents couldn’t see it until it was ready. Right now Abby is listening to The Taming of the Shrew on tape inside the box.

Abby: I am a secret agent spy. Eliza dressed me up.

Abby: The taller girl is my sister Eliza. The smaller girl is her mini-American Girl doll, Josefina. I drew the picture.

Eliza: My favorite kind of bread is cornbread. My sister loves it too. The other kind of bread is pumpkin bread. Abby and I don’t like it very much, even though Abby is smiling with a piece of it in her hand in the picture.

Eliza: I took this picture of Abby when we were leaving the Las Perlas Islands near Panama. She’s leaning into the forward hatch passing on Mom’s orders to Dad for stowing the anchor chain, while Mom is pulling up the anchor.

Eliza: Abby and I were playing with mini-American Girl dolls on deck. Abigail is pulling out Kaya from inside the bottom of the mast. That place is a great doll home.

Abigail: I am the princess of this game and I love my servant, Eliza. That’s why I give her better clothing.

Eliza: I am Abigail’s servant, even though I am better dressed than she is.

Eliza: Yeah!!! I just finished my first needle point canvas.

Eliza: I finished my first knitted blanket right after we anchored in the Galapagos, in Wreck Bay.

Eliza: This is me holding the tiller when we’re anchoring.

Eliza: This is me looking for coral heads in clear shallow water.

Eliza: I am really nervous-looking in this picture because there are lots of coral reefs here in the Gambiers and it’s overcast, so it’s hard to read the depth of the water.

Eliza: Climbing up to the spreaders is harder than you’d think. It’s ok until you look down. Right now I’m watching for the “green flash.”

Eliza: The green flash is a green splotch above the sun just after it sets. It’s very rare and lasts only a moment.

Abigail: I love to swing on the halyard.

Abby: The halyard is a rope to raise the sail.

Eliza: This is a tropic bird that we caught on a fishing line. (See our earlier log entry for details about this event.)

Abby: The hooks went into the back of the bird’s neck and its right wing.

Abby: We gave the bird a bowl of fresh water and dead flying fish. It did not drink or eat anything.

Abby: “Seahorses” is my favorite pair of pajamas.

Abby: We called this game, “Piggy Land.” The house is made out of Math-U-See blocks. It’s called “Piggy Land” because pigs live in the house. You can see a close-up picture below.

Eliza: Each of the ten pigs is doing something different. One is sick. One is visiting him. One is sleeping. One is cooking. One is eating. One is looking out the window. One is walking. One is doing homeschool. One is in the bathroom; so you can’t see her. And another one is sleeping in the other bedroom.

Abby: We listen to a lot of books on tape and CD. We listen to them over and over because we don’t have enough on the boat. My favorites are the Jim Weiss story about Queen Elizabeth and also The Secret Garden.

Eliza: The mini-American Girls dolls are at school, learning about each other by reading each other’s stories. Abby: The girls are sitting in age order. From the top of the picture they are Kaya (9 ½), Felicity (9), Samantha (8), Molly (7) and Kirsten (6). These are our made-up ages. In the books they are all 9 ½.

Eliza: We are sending a message-in-a-bottle not far from the Galapagos. Abby: We put in the bottle our Estrela card, a gimp bracelet and a fishing line necklace.

Eliza and Abby: We love our Mom so much. She’s the best!

Abby: This is when we’re crossing the equator. Eliza: Dad is showing us on the GPS chart plotter where we are. A squiggly line shows where we’ve been. We actually crossed the equator three times because Mom was baking bread on watch and not really paying close attention to the GPS!

Abby: Our hair is the same color. Eliza: We have rats’ nests in our hair because we didn’t brush it during the passage to Panama. We’re about to brush it. Youch!!!!