Thursday, 13th January 2011 (Presently at Sea, Destination............. St. Helena)
00.00hrs We sailed 200 miles in the last 24 hrs from midnight Tuesday to midnight Wednesday.
We still have a current of 1 knot against us all the time. The weather is poor, with plenty of showers, strong gusts, very uncomfortable choppy seas, but the speed is good.
It was so soooooo cold, that skipper had on 3 layers of clothes, plus a full set of oil skins over the lot, not to mention the boots, hat and gloves, brrrrr, brrrrr, the sooner we are back in the tropics, the better.
08.00hrs Emily spotted a trawler a few miles away and caused such excitment, skipper thought that we had discovered a Mermaid, or something very rare, like the Allbatrosses we saw yesterday. What majestic birds, a sea bird that has a wing span of about 6 feet, and spends most of its life in the air.......
09.00hrs RADIO CALL We took around 40/50 miles out on almost all boats, with the exception of Wild Tigris. This roll call takes about 30 minutes to complete and is usually followed with most boats having chats between them for another 30/40 minutes. We had one flying fish on the deck this morning, we haven't seen one of those for a long time,
12.00hrs We have sailed 1,000 miles in 5 days, that's good going by any standards for any cruising boat.
The skies cleared around lunch time and we had a beautiful day, with some great sailing, ohhhh, that lovely prussian blue water surrounding us on all sides, and plenty of white horses to remind us of the strong breeze pushing us along. We are still Goose winging, and are now almost 100 miles west of our rum line. The wind shoud go more easterly as we go further north, so we decided that we will gybe (change direction directly for St. Helena) early in the morning. Most of the fleet are between 100 and 200 miles east of our position, so they will have a longer sail to St. Helena than us as it stands right now, but we should have a faster course as we will be reaching and they will be sailing dead down wind, which is never very fast. Well thats the theory... We will know in a few days who made the right decision.....
16.50hrs We have sailed 214 miles in the 24 hrs since this time yesterday. We will wait until we reach our destination for the drink.
Emily prepared a S.A. dinner called "Babotie" basically consisting of minced beef with onions, and all sorts of powders, including curry, however she began to feel ill during the process (it was quite rough at this stage) so the poor girl had to return to the cockpit and let Skipper complete the dish by adding a mixture of eggs and milk on top and putting the dishes in the preheated oven. BUT, but, he (skipper) made the egg thing to watery and of course it all spilt all over the blinkin oven causing a desperate burning smell. Then the bloody generator shut down, ohhhhh my gawd! what next, next, the generator overheated and shut itself down, "Mipes all crity" oh, we had the dinner first, and it was great.
Later, much later, around midnight, Skipper and Sham opened up the generator and found that there was no sweet water in the system, we also changed the impellor in the raw water pump, and put the lot all back together again, like "Humpty Dumpty". Experts, that is what we will be, blooming experts!
Gawd! its bleedin freezing again, another night at sea. Often the skipper wonders if we are normal doing this, no we can't be, not doing a trip like this, but then its very exciting as well.
Night watches, :- 21.00hrs / 00.00hrs...................................Emily
00.00hrs / 03.00hrs..................................Aileen
03.00hrs / 06.00hrs..................................Skipper
06.00hrs / 09.00hrs .................................Sham
That's it.
Signed :- Stephen Hyde (Skipper)