Coral IV - Approaching St Lucia

The last couple of days have just involved everything getting hotter and hotter as we near the West Indies. The night watches have been amazing with the soft warm air blowing over you and simply begging you to doze off as the boat speeds on. We’re all incredibly tired now and the stand by for the watch keeper generally tends to arrive on deck, update the log and then slump in the cockpit, dead to the world. The other night I somehow managed to stand three night watches. That’s nine hours of staring into darkness in a twelve hour night. But what darkness! The moon is no longer more than a sliver which joins us at about 6am and for the rest of the night there is the most magnificent canopy of stars to gape at in awe. I have never seen so many shooting stars and have got through so many wishes that I’m getting on to the really selfless stuff like world peace, bankruptcy for Rupert Murdoch, that kind of worthy stuff.

 

Yesterday Ivory and I spent hours at the bow of the boat reading in the shade cast by the headsails. As the yacht curtsied to the glistening waves, we agreed that this was all most satisfactory and we’d happily carry on sailing the oceans for a long time yet. By contrast, today has been a deeply unsatisfactory day for me. Exhausted by night watch, I had a most fraught early morning watch and retired to my bunk feeling dreadful. Alas, today is my day to be ‘Kock’, so I was up again within the hour producing some delicious breakfast fare with all the good grace and bonhomie of Naomi Campbell. It’s so hot I have almost no interest in food and even less in creating some fine dining for tonight so god knows what they are going to get. We reckon we will get in to St Lucia at some time in the early hours of Friday morning. After that I am going on a diet which involves no cooking.

 

//Sam