Since yesterday our spirits have soared as we have now have useable winds again which we hope and pray will prevail. Yesterday was a bad day which culminated in Gilly-mate having a (brief) episode of sense-of-humour failure. All day ( and the one before) Skipper was rightly completely obsessed by finding some wind and we actually found some but it was right on the nose so then there was lots of cynicism about lack of trade winds and the inaccuracies of forecasting...to put it politely. Gilly-mate decided the best course of action was to provide some domestic and culinary good-mood music and she set to to make some more bread only to find that her svelte digital scales do not work whilst the boat is rocking. Hitherto she had pre-weighed the dry ingredients whilst on terra firma. So some guess-work ensued and the result you ask? Disaster. Whereas other loaves have been wolfed down in a real cut-and-come-again fashion this flat, grey brick is still sitting unloved and has already been scorned in favour of crackers.
Stocks of all fresh stuffs 10 days into the voyage are become scarce. At our breadless lunch, Skipper announced innocently "this is the last tomato...." . Now, at this point I can hear my Mother and Sister (and our Tortoise too come to that) gasp knowingly as in my family tomatoes are a staple food item and it is not unheard of to eat several every day. It is impossible to imagine a fridge without tomatoes. Bad news indeed Supper too was much the same.....a spaghetti bolognese made and frozen but as it was defrosting I remembered the dubious provenance of both the mince and some of the other ingredients and my fears were borne out when exasperated Skipper tried it and only ate the pasta! And all this was happening with a backdrop of beating uncomfortably away from the rhumb-line.
So, all in all not a good day and one to hopefully look back on as a turning point in the voyage as we now seem to have found the trade winds again. One little positive point to add though...Skipper, understanding something was amiss at lunch, offered me his last slice of tomato....it must still be love!