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Jo - 22:18N 25:14W



Friday 28th November

After the excitement of the dolphins, Alastair upped the ante with his version of a Spanish omelette, which had just about everything thrown in for good measure. It did not disappoint!

We decided to calm things down for dinner as we were charging around doing 9+ knots with the code zero and although scraping food off the floor to eat probably adds some interesting flavours and textures, the omelette deserved a more dignified presentation. Sadly we overlooked the opportunity to open a decent Rioja to toast the King of Spain’s singed beard; I think I can get away with that now we are outside Spanish territorial waters!

Dinner concluded (doing almost 7 knots under main alone); we unfurled the genoa and resumed normal service, flying along on a beam reach at approximately 8-9 knots.

Given that none of us probably sleep for more than 4 hours at one time, I’d have said we were all doing pretty well. Whilst I thought this was the case, the end of my watch (06:00 hrs this morning) proved me wrong. I didn’t think it was possible to fall asleep whilst standing; you can! Luckily, I awoke as my knees gave way and I didn’t hit the floor. However, by the end of my watch I was a zombie and hadn’t computed that over a period of 2 hours the wind had backed and that we were approximately 50 degrees off course. Whilst to date we’ve adopted the strategy of sailing the fastest course in approximately the right direction, 50 degrees in the wrong direction for 1-2 hours is not very clever and I hope we don’t pay for that in our placing. In the overall scheme of things, it’s not a big deal, but it does now mean quite a few hours beating to windward to keep us pointing in the right direction to join the trade winds.



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