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Jo - 19:14:41N 42:45:50W



Thursday 4th December 2014

...day eleven seems to have established a very settled routine; boring many a non-sailor would say. There are little routines we perform; as much ways to fill the time as necessary to the maintenance and record keeping of the boat. Log keeping, navigation, meteorology and watches are all important functions to assist our safe passage, but there are also other duties which are important in a different way such as meals! Lunch and dinner are highlights of the day and a time when we gather. The remainder of the time one is either on watch (helm or standby) or off watch, and if you are off watch the time is yours to do as you like. For most, this means reading as there is a limit to what one can get up to on a 43’ boat!

As I’ve said previously, we’re not exactly slumming it. Last night we had paella followed by cheese and biscuits and accompanied by a fruity local (to Las Palmas!) wine. To complicate matters and keep us on our toes we put the ships clock back by 3 hours to start the adjustment process to the new time zones we are crossing as we are now over half way. At least this means we get to see a slightly different part of the day. I now get to see the sunrise, and although it wasn’t spectacular, it is a welcome sight after an increasingly cold 6 hour night watch.

Other routines we carry out are daily inspections of the rigging and sails for signs of chaffing, checking the engine oil and coolant, pumping the bilges and waste processing; a particularly pleasant task.

Before I forget, I’d like to thank Peter Sanders of Sanders Sails for our new 110% high cut, hank on genoa which perfectly complements our existing 120% furling genoa for downwind sailing. It has proved invaluable, not only giving us decent boat speed (8 knots with 20 knots true wind), but it is also a very stable rig which taxes the steering gear less than a main and genoa.

With all this sea, we just passed within 0.5nm of a two masted, gaff rigged ketch, white with a wooden hull, looking very much like the Mary Celeste until we saw it had some crew on deck. They started following us; maybe they think we know where we’re going?! We were also entertained by another pod of dolphins this afternoon, possibly bottlenose, however they weren’t very large.

Talking of entertainment, we were trying to remember all the lines to the ‘Owl and the Pussycat’ by Edward Lear last night. It was revealed that George’s memory is better than all of ours put together, however, if someone would be so kind as to email all the verses it will stop us blowing a gasket trying to remember the remainder.

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