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Webster - Treacle miners demonstrate their prowess



Friday 23rd May 2014. Postion 36 50'N 40 19'W Noon DTD 570nm

The wind dropped a little this morning early on so we shook out the reefs and romped on. Good job we are not in the military otherwise Dave would have been on yet another charge for sleeping on duty. He can't hide the fact that he's asleep given the audible signs given out; he would contend that he is making sure whales don't come too close by warning them of our presence. He managed to wake up in time for the end of his watch this morning just in time to go to bed again; if he slept any more it would not be worth his while getting up!

The sailing has been brilliant today with plenty of wind from a good direction for us (SE) allowing us to close reach direct to Horta. The boat is powered up and loving it. Igor and I were helming in turns this morning just as the sun came up and we spent a couple of hours sailing down the 'Yellow Brick Road', heading directly at the sun doing 8+ knots. There has hardly been a cloud in the sky all day excepting for one nasty looking squall cloud for which we reefed in advance but it decided to go elsewhere and leave us alone which was very magnanimous of it. The grib files are suggesting that for the next 48 hours we should have a similar wind strength but with the direction veering west into SW as the high pressure moves south east.

With the positive progress we have made over the last few days thoughts have moved to a possible finish date and time. Tuesday next is favourite for all in the sweepstake although Dave is hedging his bets on whether he said 3 o'clock in the morning or afternoon. Doesn't matter really as with my ability to have total control over the on ship time, Dave will lose the sweepstake and have to buy the first round regardless!

Doing a little fine tuning to the course this lunch time I asked Neal who was on the auto helm at the time to change course to 095 degrees whereas 'George' was set at 096. The quote of course of the day by a long chalk came back, 'I have just knocked one off Skipper'. This after he had to dry his bedding due possibly to having a wet dream? He said it was sweat but naturally we had other certain ideas as to the cause. All his bedding has been strewn all over the boat for most of the day. [Post script to this episode was that we have a small leak through a deck fitting which made the bed wet and so the necessary printed apology will follow on page 22 on July 23rd]

Every morning so far when Neal has paired with Dave on watch there has been evidence of sweet pilfering left in the cockpit; empty wrappers etc. poorly hidden. So I quietly hid the sweets reserve under deck. Big mistake hiding things under the floorboards whilst we have trained treacle miners on board as they can sniff out anything sweet underground and in consequence my hiding place was just child's play to them, no challenge at all. In retrospect, I should have put them up high out of reach so they would never have got to them. What is it with Haribo?? Is it addictive?

We noted quite a bit of water in the bilge today although I had not checked it since we effected the repair to the forward heads sink outlet that had been pouring in water on the way to Bermuda. The repair is good so there is either another leak - can't find it, or it is residual water finding its way to the low side now we are back on starboard tack. Lets hope it is.......

For Lyall's benefit only, here is the penultimate paragraph. Nothing to worry about here!

Looks like it is going to be a lovely evening and lets hope we can continue to do 7-8 knot through the night as comfortably as we are doing at the moment. It will at least allow the Chili con carne to go down - I've eaten too much!


Charlie




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