Gulliver of Southampton - GULLIVER OF SOUTHAMPTON 28th November

Last night's run of 11 knots average boat speed ended abruptly when the
spinnaker guy let go at around 2200. Fortunately the sail itself escaped
intact and with a bit of splicing action should be ready to go again soon.
Having retrieved and stuffed the spinnaker down the forehatch we resumed our
course west (ish) under main and genoa with the remainder of the night
progressing without further ado.

Dawn (just after 0700...still working on GMT) saw the daily update fired off
to Tibbsy and a change of watch at 0800 from Ed and Andy to Anna and Zoe. By
1000 the crew were all out of bed and some creative thinking combined with
the arrival of a fresh weather forecast led to a gybe and a main drop,
leaving mizzen and genoa pushing us along at a repectable 7 knots. The
current strategy is to stay with this sail plan and maybe wind things up a
bit tomorrow.

Andy has been valiantly continuing his fishing, unfortunately not landing
anything despite coming frustratingly close a few times. Mark performed the
less exciting yet essential task of changing the gas regulator (finding the
thing seemed to take the most time). Anna (when not in bed) continued to
make Christmas decorations and is contemplating turning the frayed parts of
the spinnaker guy into a Father Christmas beard. Zoe and Lis became the
first people to do some laundry, unfortunately there might have been a
certain amount of salt water rinsing whilst said garments were hanging on
the rail. Lis deserves a special mention for putting in the hard graft on
the day to day essentials (including dinner WITH muffins).

The inter-boat battleships continues to frustrate our team with Falbala
again emerging victorious. Ed isn't overly concerned however, still being
distracted by the sheer excitement of playing battleships whilst actually on
a boat AND over SSB radio... brilliant. We aim to make it Ladies Day
tomorrow,

Lis is very concerned about missuing (no not her family) The Archers and
hopes that someone is downloading the podcasts for her.

All the best Mark Ed Lis Anna Zoe and Andy