Sensory awareness

Skills that are useful in boating - situational and sensory awareness. These fine skills were included in pilot training but missing from professor training and so Carol is much more on the ball than I am when it comes to noticing unusual sounds and smells.

A friend told us that a favorite game aboard their boat was “what’s that smell?-where’s that smell?” and Carol instigates that game aboard Estrellita 5.10b and consistently wins.

Case in point: Carol says “do you smell burning plastic?”. I smell nothing. Carols says “over here, by the stove.”. I smell…maybe…something. Carol finds an avant garde, dripping clear green plastic installation in the back of our stove and upon further investigation we find out that a metal fork and a plastic spoon had fallen off the stovetop (where we often dry dishes) to an area behind the stove that conveniently ends right over the burner of the oven. Every time we baked we were slowly reducing the plastic spoon to what you see above.

Poor design on the part of Force10 and now we are careful to not put anything small on the stovetop to dry.