We have been hauling a package meant for Siggi and Kati since Almerímar, wedged in a locker and shifting a little every time the boat heeled, and I will confess I had started to take a certain proprietary interest in the thing. Cargo carried that long earns a spirit’s attention. Sailors have always run errands for other sailors this way, boat to boat, port to port, long before anyone thought to invent a postal service, and I consider it one of the oldest and best customs of the trade. Kasibu was waiting here in Santa Pola, and the handoff went exactly as these things should: quick, glad, and with no paperwork whatsoever.

The other order of business was rather less dignified. This boat has had a certain trouble belowdecks for weeks now, a trouble I have been far too close to for far too long and will describe only as a hose that was not doing its one job. Whoever decided a boat’s toilet plumbing should be my problem to notice before anyone else did not think that decision through. A proper odor-proof hose finally came aboard here, and I would like it on the record that I am the one who has to live with the old smells lingering in the woodwork long after the crew has stopped noticing them. Progress, when it finally arrives, is always welcome. It is rarely as prompt as I would like.

Santa Pola itself I have no complaints about. A package delivered and a smell resolved in the same three days is about as tidy a stop as this crew has managed all season.