23:50.8N 30:37.8W
The crew we rudely awoken on the morning of 1st December by Mike cranking up the stereo to the sound of 'Christmas Carols with Kings College' rendition of O Come All Ye Faithful. This would normally be accepted as a pleasant wake-up, however in the 3rd verse Mike regressed to his Choir boy days and attempted to sing the descount line. Ben quickly put on his headphones to listen to Aerosmith and Minkey grunted something that resembled 'barr-humbug'.
After the crew had finished administering each other First Aid for the perforated ear drums cause by the wake up call, we continued in our now much practised daily routine. The day passed with little drama and spirits were high after a little sun downer beer. However, the merriment was to be short lived.
Whilst Mike was on watch, he noticed that suddenly he was not getting much feedback from the main sail. The rest of us we called up from our bunks frantically searching for lifejackets and headtorches and found that the reef 1 line had snapped. Because of where it broke we were unable to keep just one reef in the sail and had to reduce size down to 2 reefs, thus slowing us down, much to our frustration as it cost us valuable time and speed.
Just over 6 hours later (with Mike back at the helm, notice the theme developing...) the spinnaker pole (which we had spent most of the previous day fixing) dropped into the water. Luckily it was still attached to the yacht at one end so (having called the rest of us up on deck again) we recovered it. After yet another half an hour of slowing the boat down to fix the issue we were on our way again hoping that Day 5 would bring us some much needed luck.
Day 5 was also wash day. We broke out the wet wipes and anti bacterial gel and had our first 'clean' since leaving Las Palmas. We also changed t-shirts.
SOME IMPORTANT STATS FROM DAY 5:
Picture in advent calendar = A Boot
Maximum Boat speed = 12.4kts
Number of Reefs = see above
Maximum Gust = 30 Knots
Number of Dolphins = 0
Number of Whales = 0
Amount of Rain = Not a single drop
Jags, Ben, Minkey and Mike