A blissful night for me without a shift. Apparently the wind picked up a bit last night and there was talk of hitting 13 knots of boat speed. I’m impressed I managed to sleep through it all. The sea was pretty choppy and therefor not the most comfortable.
Ginger the Gennaker was up all night and remained up all day too. We were clocking up some great speeds (10 to 8 knots) as the wind kept steady in the mid teens for most of the day. This must be the Trade winds at last. We are all thrilled to have crept a little further up the Arc Positioning list.
Most of the morning I spent cleaning and having a sort out of our fridges (4 big drawers)and getting the remains of our perishables into the fridges now they are a little emptier.
Very impressed seeing Luke out exercising and doing his yoga on the front of the boat. It is remarkably stable even going at this speed. Han had me out stretching yesterday, your core gets an additional work out as you are always bracing yourself against the motion of the boat. She got Rowan out today. Tom had a days rest as he overdid it yesterday. He set up a little gym in the front using various ropes as pull ups, it looked pretty intense, no wonder he needed a day off.
For supper the 3 meat eaters had our tiny leg of lamb we bought in Las Palmas cooked in the slow cooker which was very tasty and the veggies had rather dodgy looking beetroot sausages. At least the truffle mash and roast veggies we could all enjoy.
We were just clearing up, Rowan had gone to bed as he is on the early morning shift, when he came charging upstairs. He had just seen a Mayday satellite email from our Dutch friends on Brainstorm asking Rowan to contact an English boat, What’s Next that is somewhere near them, as they have a problem with their rudder and are taking water on board. Rowan managed to get hold of What’s Next and luckily they were already in contact with Brainstorm. Rowan then got hold of Mennow on Brainstorm and it sounds like they are only taking in a bit of water and What’s Next have turned around to help them. They are hoping they may be able to fix the rudder as they are not taking in too much water but will at least have help on standby. It was very sobering and a reminder that we are out there in the middle of nowhere.
The moon sinking below the horizon
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