Well yesterday was a lovely day, we had about 16 -20 knots of breeze and clear blue skies, it was rolling around a little less, so much so that rather than make up plates with a selection of cheeeses etc (thanks very much Sheena the Stilton is delicious) I passed up a chopping board with cheeses and meats on it and we helped ourselves. I’m not sure if this worked much better but it was a little different. The butter is too soft to leave out now so is living in the fridge mind you, I prefer it cold and laid onto bread in slices about an eighth of an inch thick so this worked for me quite well. We had our final tomato yesterday, the last of any fresh fruit or veg other than things like lemons, cabbage onions potatoes and onions which are all actually holding on well.
We still have a fairly conservative sail plan of one reefed main and poled out genoa but may get the rest of the main out later once people are confident it’s reasonably sensible. The wind is around 15 kts today, significantly less than yesterday.
We passed a yacht in the night,she was only doing about 4 knots to our 6, she was called Skoll and 11m long - information from the AIS.
I have an ancient Creative Nomad MP3 player which I’d brought a long to see if I could get it to work with the boat’s radio. When I tried it on the way to the Canaries I had littlte luck but since then I changed the battery for a new one. Having done this it came alive but the scroll button didn’t work and I was stuck listening to ‘The tide is high’ by Blondie (or it may be the time is right), after fiddling about a bit I could only listen to. A demo of the machine’s capabilities by an irritatiing american / singaporean. The boys tried and had no luck either. I was wondering about pressing the reset button however thought that there was a strong chance that this would erase all the music. With much fiddling and constaant re pressing of the scroll buttons I found I could move the cursor occasionally and with. More of the same it got better so now we can probably listen to all of Blondie’s greatest hits along with everything else that I recorded on it about 22 years ago.
I cooked up a sweet and sour pork dish last night out of the remains of the roast pork and even if I say so myself, thought it was pretty good. It was served with fried rice.
Katharine has sent me a recipe for Skirly which we’ll try soon, it sounds like more of a cold weather dish than hot but I’m sure will be good.
I gather it’s been a bit breezy at home and people may have worried about us offshore but we’ve seen nothing at all other than trade winds for a week. Or so now. Hopefully I’ve not lost any trees as I’ve already a pile of wood in need of splitting and drying.
The day’s run yesterday was 162 the lowest since hitting the trades proper and I suspect the run will be similar or fewer by a little today. We’re forecast for light winds today and tomorrow befor ethey pick up again and go a litttle more Northerly which would probably increase speed a bit, we’re currently almost dead downwind.
Stephen is knocking off sights every day or so now and coming up with sensible positions, a good achievement so once he’s done the Atalantic he’ll just have a Westbound passage around Cape Horn to tick off for full bragging rights Yacht Club. (I believe it also confers the right to spit to weather although why anyone would want to is beyond me.
Well happy chainsawing to you all at home.
Jock and the boys.
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