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Starblazer - 22/01/2016 – More of the same.



I’ll try not to be too repetitive. Boring! The winds seem to have a daily
pattern, swinging behind us late morning and rising gently, allowing us to
make our required heading before dying out then veering towards the south
forcing us further north during the night. If this pattern continues we’ll
have to set both genoas to the same side, hoist the main and alter course to
bring the wind around a little more towards the beam. We don’t really want
to do this because the twin headsail rig gives us best speed if the wind is
from behind.

The gentle winds are not conducive to good passage making and Brazil is
still a tantalising 1,595 nM away. On the plus side, the seas are calm with
only a little rock and roll, in fact so calm I got the sewing machine out,
setting it up on the chart table. I completed the mammoth task of making a
complete set of 40 code flags in Cape Town; the next project is to make a
replacement red ensign. We should have bought several new ones before we
left the UK, however the sewn ones are quite expensive, the flag material
fades badly and is a fairly open weave allowing the fly to snag on just
about anything, becoming very tattered. I am making the new one from the
same material as I used for the code flags, sold as ‘gabardine’ I discovered
it cut well with a hot knife which removes the problem of it fraying
dreadfully. I wish I’d made that discovery before cutting out the other 40
flags! The geometry of the quarters in the Union Flag is a bit of a
challenge but I started off with paper pattern pieces which I stuck together
to make up each quarter, checking for squareness, before cutting any fabric.
I had unpicked the old flag so had some guidance. I’d tacked the diagonal
stripes in each quarter together then sewed them on the machine. Today’s
job is to complete each quarter with the white vertical and horizontal
bands. I didn’t expect to have a new flag for our arrival in Brazil but it
is looking quite promising!

Having spent an afternoon sewing, dinner was something easy and relatively
quick because I’d forgotten to get any more meat from the freezer. I
usually put 3 or 4 days’ meats in the fridge at a time. Quickest to thaw?
Sausages cooked with mashed potato, butternut squash, courgettes and onion
gravy was followed by an apple slice with custard. Both the apple slice and
the custard were ready made so I can’t take any credit for them. I should
mention that lunch was a Spanish tortilla type using up left over potato and
some chorizo slices. I cooked it in the oven in a silicon cake ‘tin’ as I
find it cooks much more evenly than in the frying pan.

John’s new fishing reel got some exercise yesterday evening but, by the time
he got up into the cockpit, today’s dinner had managed to hop off the hook
and make itself scarce. Oh well, better luck today, hopefully, though we
don’t need a big fish because we do not have much room in the freezer.

Joyce



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