The Magic Kettle

Hero remembers vaguely the moment in Moitessier's The Long Way when the professor sermonizes about the pressure cooker at sea. Here's a Hero's elegy: It is the magic kettle. Place water and whatever the hell else you want into it -- rice, garbanzos, pieces of chicken, curry paste, tuna, a swatch of canvas -- zap it for 5 minutes after first steam and let it sit for another 4. Even if the boat is bouncing around like a cat on coals (oh, and it is! oh, yes, it is...) the cooker stays sealed. Throw it across the cabin and it stays sealed (if it hits your head, there's no guarantee your skull with stay sealed. More on that later.) It is also very gas-efficient, and ordains every dish with a mystical tastiness. The pressure cooker = magic kettle.

In other news: We worked on the assym yesterday in the mouth of the harbor, and went through the reefing system. A double-reef is the Solo's favorite configuration in force 4/5. Back at the dock I climbed the mast to replace the VHF antenna and the Winddex, and had a view right into the ladies showers along the pier. That should satisfy the desperate cries from married men for more salacious material.

In the evening I received news that one of the bigger cash sponsors we had landed had reconsidered. The rep cited Hurricane Katrina. It was a hard blow, and it gets us dangerously close to a two-year postponement. Anyway, I accept full responsibility for Katrina (part of the general law of probability, entitl'd "Mike's Law of Trans-Atlantic Occurence," stating that whenever I fly from NYC to Barcelona, something horrible happens in the States the following day: 9/11, NYC blackout, Hurricane Katrina).

Anyway, we managed to convince the TJV race committee to allow us to qualify with a Sat D+ system in stead of a Sat C. I had an offer last month from Marine Track for a Sat D+, and now they are balking. Looks like another weekend in Lisbon...