Sailing in Mushroom-Turtle Soup

We sail on a polished blue surface, with a rolling swell: liquid glass. The hot sun orders us to shed layers of wool . And where did I bury my shorts?
In the sea flowing by we start to see small white “bumps”. And more of them. Streams of them, thick as hail.
Like pearls, the string broken, fallen all over the floor. Some large, some smaller, lots of them.
Pearls?! Their just small Styrofoam balls, from packing crates tipped off a container boat, spread out floating along with the current.
Styrofoam?! With roots? The bigger ones have grayish “roots” growing downwards under them. Must be mushrooms. Great, we’re sailing in mushroom soup! Or mushroom-turtle soup; did you see that little turtle paddling by?

On the Norwegian Net the suggestions tumble in. The consensus is they must be jelly fish. Not the home-grown bluish or stinging orange jelly-ish varieties. These are thousands of tiny opaque white balls. There is also the occasional blue-purple Portuguese Man-of-war “sail” among them. Another jelly-fish. Or maybe these “mushrooms” are just Portuguese babies-of –war?

Later, the wind picks up enough to raise the genaker. “Sedna”s is already up. Then, down comes ours. We rush forward, pull it saltwater-wet out of the waves. The halyard, freed from the sail is stuck at the top of the mast.
So we sail on with jib and main and a little motor help. Another 40 liters of diesel into the tank.

By sail or by motor, we're bound for Ireland.