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Lydia - Leg 2 Day 8 - Half Way! And the Gas Man Came to Call



Today started early for all of us. It was 0300 to be precise when Steve, who
had spent his watch chasing (or rather, in order to keep it in our stern
quadrants, running away from) the fickle wind under some spectacularly wet
rain clouds, noticed that the yankee sheet was no longer attached. We all
turned to and with the foredeck floodlight blazing, managed to re-attach the
sheet, which had worn through due to chafing at the end of the pole, with
relative ease because the wind was so light. Now rigged with a block to
ensure that should not happen again the rig has performed well all day in
the mercifully fresher winds that have pushed us along at speeds
consistently above 6 knots.

Our speed improved further when the fishermen reduced our drag by recovering
a large (~ 10 lbs) Dorado. A magnificent beast, it died the same quick death
as its predecessor courtesy of the Canary Islands hooch in its gills. The
doctor revived his surgical skills to dissect it and one fillet fed us all
with more to spare to go into our fish soup at supper. And there's still
another whole fillet in the freezer.

The grumpiness induced by overnight caffeine deprivation due to the absence
of gas and hence hot water, was compounded when the 'simple' gas bottle
change promised by the Mate, proved not to be so simple. \in the end the
problem was probably not down to a lack of gas but to the gas solenoid,
which allows us to turn off the gas bottle at source by pressing a switch in
the galley. It appears to have decided that 'none shall pass' so we've had
to bypass it using a redundant but, in these circumstances, very useful pipe
run to a gas barbeque that is no longer fitted. New gas safety procedures
are in place using an isolatingvalve in the galley and the 'bodging' word is
definately not used in the context of this repair!

Though we achieved it during the morning watch, we celebrated our passing of
the half way mark this evening with steaks and some of the last of the
'fresh' veg. It's so fresh now that it generally leaps out to greet you when
you open the veg drawer these days. There are a couple of irradiated corns
on the cob, which were probably brought onboard in Lymington, that show
absolutely no signs of going off.

Mild panic set in yesterday evening when the satphone rang with an incoming
voice call. It was the unwelcome voice of Lydia's service provider telling
us that we had all but run out of credits. All very mysterious as to where
they went but the upshot is that we're being a bit more cautious about our
use of airtime. So, while the blog will continue its unlikely to be
embellished by photographs any time soon and so readers will have to use
their active imaginations to conjure up visions of Sargasso weed, Henry the
crab and the skipper posing with his huge Dorado.

The electronic gizmo says we'll arrive around midday on 1 Dec at the current
rate of progress but the skipper is offering a rather more cautious ETA.
Fingers crossed that this lovely wind stays with us.


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