Sephina - The mystery of the exploding apple juice

Thursday afternoon (day 11)

There was I just before lunch, innocently typing an email when a loud 'BANG' came from the galley (ok it's only 3 feet from the chart table), suddenly followed by a cold shower of something wet & sticky. Our cook, Robin, had saved half of the contents of a carton of apple juice (at least that's what he told us it was) in a squash bottle and hadn't noticed it had started to ferment (we assume). Everything in the galley, companionway and nav-station was dripping and smelling of rough cider, and I'd only just changed into a new snowy white t-shirt !

After the trials and tribulations of getting to Las Palmas (almost steering failure near Bayona, engine malfunction 1st day out of Lagos, mysterious flat batteries at Porto Santo, continuing engine problems into Las Palmas), it's been an uneventful passage so far, except for the S&R ship Puntas Arrenas lighting us up at night last week, trying to find the scource of an unexplained mayday-relay from close to our position, and for climbing the main mast yesterday to straighten one of the climbing steps (bent in a halyard wrap) that was threatening to hole the mainsail, oh and bursting seven mainsail sliders on the first night in an unexpected double gybe without the port side preventer in place ... ooops ! (good thing the trisail and mainsail tracks are the same size as we pinched the sliders from the trisail).

We're languishing among the tail-end of the fleet, that's the trouble with an old, heavy, long keel ketch, it take a force 5 to get going properly, and what do we have at the moment .... 5 knots of wind, so the engine is on for the first time to drive the boat rather than to charge the batteries (we're motoring south in search of some more wind). We're expecting to cross the half way point sometime early in the morning (Friday day 12), about the same time as the leaders are getting their rum-punch in Rodney Bay.

Hey ho, at least it's sunny !

Duncan, Robin & Pete