Starblazer - 22/03/2014 – Reasons to be cheerful

I’ll get the negative out of the way first. There is still very little wind, our day’s run to noon yesterday was a paltry 109 miles, we are going nowhere fast. It seems that the wind is always 200 or more miles ahead of us! All the faster boats have arrived, soon there will be just a handful left at sea. Moan over.

We have been in a worse sailing position than this before. On ARC Europe in 2010, between Bermuda and the Azores, our starter motor burnt out, the wind dropped to a whisper and in one 24 hour period we only made 30 miles towards our destination. At least here we can probably drift in the right direction at that speed.

We are fit and well and enjoying life. We are very lucky to have the opportunity to explore the world in this way. Many people dream of a circumnavigation, quite a few set off, sadly many never fulfil their dreams. As I said, we are lucky and we have to give a big thank you to our very understanding and supportive family, especially Cathy and Jamie. They have the unenviable task of handling our mail, paying any bills that come in and letting us know about any important mail. Thanks guys.

On the catering front, the galley slave took it easy yesterday and opted for comfort food rather than anything fancy. Lunch was baked beans on toast, Heinz of course. Dinner was steak and chips with spiced red cabbage. I’ve perfected homemade chips, I think. I cut the potato into wedges, boil for 6 minutes, drain then fry in a little oil for 2-3 minutes on each of the three sides. For dessert we had strawberry mousse, made from some of my latest batch of yoghurt.

During the afternoon the bored crew made curtains, O.K. not real size ones that would be silly. Our granddaughter has a lovely dolls house and I had embroidered a bedspread for the four poster bed then I made matching curtains. Yesterday I finally got around to embroidering a panel to go on a pelmet, all I have to do now is find something stiff enough to form the box shape that will survive posting back to the U.K. Then I made a pair of curtains for the nursery from the same material that I had used for the eiderdown. I’m sure we brought an awful lot of unnecessary ‘stuff’ with us and I suppose that has to include the scraps of fabric! Today’s task will be dining room curtains from left over fabric from the fancy dress outfits I made in Las Palmas before the start of the ARC.

Any racing sailors will be wincing at the crew’s lack of interest in tweaking and trimming the sails. There is no point. We are going almost dead down wind, we have two genoas poled out, one either side. There is nothing to be gained from adjusting the sheets except chafe, the downwind sailors’ nightmare. There is also no point in helming, Q is managing to keep a straight course far better than I could. The swell is so gentle there is no need to continually alter course to ride the waves diagonally rather than plummet over the top. Starblazer can look after herself but, PLEASE, can we have some more wind?

Joyce