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Starblazer - 09/03/2014 – Our best day yet (on this leg)



Our day’s run to noon yesterday was 159 miles towards our destination and
today’s run is on target to match it, which means an average speed of 6.5
knots. The wind has been steady at between 13 and 15 knots just aft of the
port beam so the boat is fairly constantly heeled at about 15 degrees,
lurching to 25 when the swell hits us. This makes moving about down below a
bit of a struggle, cooking is more difficult. On a starboard tack, i.e. the
wind coming over the right hand side of the boat, the cook can lean against
the peninsular while stirring the cooking. On port tack it is difficult to
stand upright to avoid becoming an added ingredient to the dinner!

Please don’t think I am complaining, we are really glad that we seem to have
found the southern trade winds. Now we need to avoid a hole in the winds
predicted on the GRIB files.

John had no success with fishing. The sacrificial squid was duly mounted on
the hook and trolled behind. There were several nibbles but no bite however
the squid, first of all, lost its head and tentacles and, when John pulled
it in for the night, most of its mantle had been eaten. They are clever
fishes out there who manage to avoid the lovely sharp hook.

Lunch was a brown rice and bulgar wheat salad with cucumber, red pepper,
tomatoes, onions, carrot and slices of chorizo sausages gently fried. It
was very filling, so filling in fact that I skipped dinner and John had a
couple of boiled eggs! On the cooking front, some of my friends will
remember ‘Herman’, the German friendship cake Jeanie introduced us to.
Herman is alive and well on Starblazer and, after 10 days of incubating, I
fed and divided the mix yesterday and will bake a cake today. I place the
spare portions of mix in zip lock bags and put them in the ice box until I
want to make anther cake or start the feeding process again. It is far more
successful than the ginger beer plant. One of the bottles of that exploded
in the bilge! Enough said, that is an experiment for dry land only.

Joyce



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