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Endeavour of Cork - Day 7 Wed 23rd Nov




Wednesday 23/11

2am
(UTC-2, we changed our watches. Not sure if a good idea or not....)

Just in off a midnight - 2am watch, and I have to say it was no hardship at all, apart from the dragging myself out of the bunk for it bit.

It's the most beautiful, clear, calm starry night out there - sky littered with stars, Milky Way overhead, Orion's Belt to port (or at least I thought it was Orion's Belt, now Anais informs me that I've got that wrong - goodness knows what it's called then, but it's one of only two constellations I can recognise. Can't find The Plough, I assume it's hidden by the bimini). A plane went over in the stratosphere by the looks of it, I could just about see the blinking of the lights among the stars. A couple of shooting stars. And then, just at the end of my watch, I turned around to have a quick look behind and there was a big searchlight right behind us. The bloody moon had risen while I wasn't looking, and nearly gave me a heart attack.

We have a boat right behind us - can't tell how far away they are, I'm assuming quite a distance as it's quite faint and disappears occasionally in the swell, and I think we're travelling a bit faster - but it was nice to have company out there for once.

We're still motoring in 5kts of wind or less - I got talking to another boat on the VHF today, and they said if there was no wind by tonight they'd have to knock off the engine anyhow to conserve diesel. Thankfully (for the moment anyhow) we're relatively flush with fuel, and can keep motoring to try and find the end of this giant hole we're in.

I've been having the maddest dreams for the whole trip - don't know if it's the incessant movement of the boat, or the lack of caffeine (or booze???) or just the whole experience working its way through my brain. Breda Tobin, if you're out there - you and Interpol featured in tonight's edition, before I was woken for my watch! And Sinéad, if you're reading, a few sleeps ago (there's usually more than one sleep per day) I dreamt that you had just had a new baby, got two beautiful retriever pups, and two donkeys. All at once. I just hope you have them all fully house-trained by the time I show up in a few weeks!!! (Maybe Conor isn't the only one in need of a minder on this boat - but at least I'm not on watch when I'm raving......)

My wish was granted and we got our swim this morning (well, yesterday morning now) - and it was MAGIC!!! That feeling of jumping into the clear, blue, warm water was just the best. Dermot produced a bar of Dove soap and we all had a bit of a wash, 750 miles from shore and in 24,000m of water (or so I'm told - same depth as Everest is high, apparently, unless they're winding me up again). The one upside of this calm weather is we might get to do it again!!

Right, time for the bed and more wacky dreams now.

From Endeavour - nighty night!
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