Hawkeye - ARC Blog – Day 6 – Well into the tropics

Sailors generally look forwards to arriving in the warmth of the tropics – its presently 23 deg C outside even though its 3am – but for the crew of Hawkeye this is a slightly more special event, because her theme is “tropical”. No twee anchors adorn towels, duvet covers (yes, no sleeping bags here!) and plates – instead, thanks to Alexandra's foresight, we have palm trees, pineapples and bright tropical colours.

Hawkeye is now around 1/3 of the way across the Atlantic to the Caribbean and is finally revelling in trade wind conditions – around 15 to 20 knots of wind from astern – which is the same route to the East Indies that Christopher Columbus took when he discovered the New World, although as he never set foot on the American continent, or even realised it existed, that’s a debatable accolade. As Hawkeye sails slowly across the Atlantic Ocean, her crew take turns to update our paper chart following the same procedure as the clipper sailing ships of old – which is the ceremonial plotting of the noon position every day. This brings home to Hawkeye’s crew our progress in an old-fashioned but very graphical manner. The tiny pencil crosses, and the relatively very short distance between them each day, highlights the enormity of this wide, blue rolling ocean – upon which we are just a microscopic speck. We aren't exactly a complete slave to tradition though, as a decent cup of tea has usurped our forebears daily tot of run, and hand steering is definitely frowned upon as the autopilot is much more reliable and doesn't argue back when told to change course.

Peter continues to be very successful with the fishing, catching some lovely dorado and mahi mahi, but he turned up trumps yesterday with a rather fine tuna, which we’ve just had for dinner. Richard has had several bread baking sessions, with mostly good results; what a great start to the day when Hawkeye is filled with the smell of fresh bread.

In their spare moments – of which there are many - the crew’s thoughts sometimes dwell on which critical supplies we might run out of in the remaining few weeks at sea. What might that be, I hear you ask? Well, I can share with you that top of the list of concerns at the moment is an increasing worry that we might not have enough dishwasher tablets to last us until St Lucia. Yes, such peril’s extremis! But it seems unlikely that oceanic sailors such as Sir Francis Chichester, Dame Ellen MacArthur or Peter Goss MBE would proffer us much sympathy – and, more likely, ask us to reconsider any strong views we might hold that our rather heavy dishwasher-from-Curry’s is a vital piece of sailing equipment.

Although we are keen to celebrate our crossing of the halfway point of our Atlantic voyage - at some point later this week - with an excessively large, freshly baked chocolate cake, there is much conjecture amongst the crew as to precisely where that point lies on our chart. Some argue that its simply the middle of a straight line between the Canaries and St Lucia. One crew member insists on procrastinating about the mathematical complexities of having chosen to sail the “great circle” course – which means that it isn’t either a straight line or a single bearing to sail from start to finish – but as no one else quite understands him, there is a strong suspicion that he might just be fabricating some of his evidence so that he can eat the cake at a time of his choosing, likely in the middle of his watch in the wee hours when no one else is around. The rest seem to believe that what’s more important is that we should instead estimate the time its taken to reach the halfway point, which, as we’ve had a slow start because of lack of wind, means that said chocolate cake can be gobbled down significantly earlier than other proposals.

Team Hawkeye