Walkabout - Relaxing days at sea

S7:46 W111:57

Having now completed a full week at sea we are well and truly in full swing of life onboard. The last few days have been very slow and relaxed. Lots of catching up on sleep, reading, eating and playing music. We had one fishing line out yesterday but bringing it in the evening found that it had no lure on it. The metal clip to the wire trace had ripped in two. Something big must have had a go at it.

We had a great days sailing with the blue water runner up from about 11 in the morning after our morning sail change. We ended up leaving the sail up overnight due to hours of low windspeed and no squalls in sight. We just had to be checking the radar regularly to ensure no squalls had built in the distance and would catch us out. The boat sits flat on the water and the sailing is relatively smooth, this makes for easer cooking, baking and sleeping. Breakfast was bacon and eggs sandwich in the fresh bread Traci had made the day before. We finished off coleslaw, kedgeree and had greek salad for lunch, and for dinner it was my turn to cook so we had tuna pasta bake. We had treat of a lemon drizzle cake being made by Traci in the afternoon. So afternoon snack was tea and hot lemon drizzle cake. How very British :)

It was a busy day on the AIS we had three arc boats around us, another sailing catamaran not part of our fleet. We also had 2 different container ships coming across our little group of boats. One of the arc boats even had to call a container ship up to ask their intentions, seems crazy to even meet them out here let alone have to radio to check what side they can pass on considering we are about as far from land as is possible.

Does anyone know the furthest point away from land you can get on an ocean? Not that we plan on trying it?

We are all looking forward to the half way point of our crossing. We should be crossing in about 150 nm so thats puts us at around tomorrow lunchtime. Our half way dinner will be celebrated be eating confit duck and roast potatoes and maybe a beer if we are lucky.

Life without wifi and signal is very relaxing there is nothing to catch up on so screen time on phones has dropped off a cliff. On previous passages the phones seem to take about 30 minutes for messages to stop coming in when we finally get signal. So after 3 weeks at sea it might be a little more this time.

Due to popular request of what books we are all reading.

Andrew has read and finished Endurance about Ernest Shackelton. He has now started Left for Dead about the 1979 fastnet disaster. Another happy read while at sea……
Traci has finished The Fire Blossom which is a fiction about 3 young people who emigrated to New Zealand in the 1850s. She is about the start Endurance as well.
I have read and finished Endurance too. I did beat Andrew I have to say. Turns out it's been a great purchase for me on my brothers part. I have now started and nearly finished another book called Wild at Heart that was brought for me by a friend.

Hope life back home is all good and you aren’t working too hard ;)

Lots of love from us all,

Tom, T and A xxx