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Starblazer - 20/05/2014 – A ‘nothing much’ day



As anticipated, we set about changing our sail configuration before
breakfast, to enable us to sail towards our destination. We swapped from
twin poled out genoas to both genoas to starboard (left) and the main
hoisted and its boom out to starboard. The direction was a great
improvement and the speed was at the lower end of acceptable.

John spent the morning making more soft shackles, as he mentioned in my last
log when he edited it! I spent part of the morning preparing lunch which
was to be ‘Tuna (un)cooked three ways’, a carpaccio served with capers,
tomato dice and a mustard sauce, a ceviche with crusty homemade bread and
sushi. In the event, we kept the carpaccio in the fridge and had that as a
starter for dinner. In retrospect, the flavour of the beautiful yellowfin
tuna meat was hidden in both the ceviche and the sushi so I’ll probably only
make them again if we catch another skipjack. The carpaccio was a Rick
Stein recipe, very easy and very tasty!

The highlight of the afternoon was running the watermaker for two and a half
hours, making about 150 litres, then choosing to turn it off. This latter
action is a novelty, the 12 volt primer pump we fitted does not go on
strike regularly like its 380 volt three phase predecessor did.

After dinner, which was the aforementioned carpaccio, followed by steak,
mashed potatoes, carrots and a mushroom stroganoff, the wind suddenly picked
up and we were hurtling along, making 7 knots towards our destination.
Within three hours the wind had died and we had to resort to the engine for
the first time since leaving French Polynesia. Just to really spoil John’s
evening, a small squall decided to attack us just as I was getting ready to
go on deck. He got quite wet. The annoying fact about the squall was that
it was the only one that showed up on radar within a 12 mile range.

As the title suggested, there wasn’t much to celebrate yesterday, in fact
there wasn’t much to write home about at all!

Joyce


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