Koala - Dec 5th: End of carrots

Before I start, I know you're all dying to know what we had to eat last night. Well let me tell you. We had linguine alla carbonara, and very good it was too. Made with real eggs, lardons and some grated cured manchego.

We also had to run the engine for a couple of hours to charge the batteries yesterday afternoon as the lack of speed has meant that the duogen has not been providing enough amps for us. I got a voltage warning alarm from the battery monitor when transmitting on the SSB. Whilst the engine was running, we had the water maker and everything else going flat out to make use of the excess power from the alternator. Obviously it makes sense to have the engine in gear whilst doing this so we gained a cheeky 12 miles or so in the process! All will be declared to the relevant authorities on arrival in St Lucia.

Overnight the breeze dropped again and so we dropped the main in order to get some peace and quiet and therefore sleep, which meant we were only making about 1.5 to 2 knots in about 5-6 knots of breeze with the ever present cross swell shaking the wind out of the sails. So only about 75 miles for the 24 hour run until noon today. We do have a little more breeze today, up to about 9 or 10 knots from the east which is enough to hold the sails full and mostly quiet and waft us along at about 4 knots, so hopefully this will continue. That extra couple of knots of breeze really do help.

Today is bath day on board Koala. Before you get too concerned, this is not that unusual an event! We have a solar shower heating up in the cockpit at the moment, which you have to be careful not to leave for more than an hour and half before it becomes too hot. Julia gets to use exclusively fresh water. I, being a rugged outdoor type, use salt and the bit of fresh that she generously saves for me at the end.

I decided to check the state of the ships carrots today as part of the ongoing fresh produce maintenance program. With the words "wrap them in tin foil and they last forever" ringing in my ears, I investigated. Unfortunately, although looking just as they did when I lovingly wrapped them on the dockside in Las Palmas, they have been transformed into evil smelling little packets of semi-liquid pestillence. So being the environmentally friendly guy that I am, and tempted as I was to throw the whole lot in the tide, I then had the task of individually unwrapping them and washing all of the tin foil before it went in to the bin!