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Endeavour of Cork - Day 11 - Excitement!!!



Life has settled down into a daily routine on board Endeavour lately - we're all managing our watches with hardly a glance at the roster stuck up on the wall, the meals are being produced and clean-up done by the designated persons, and in between we're all lounging around reading or chatting or dozing or trimming sails when the wind has decided to blow for us (most of the time the last few days, thankfully).

And then today just before lunchtime, Conor shot up out of his recumbent pose saying "is that something over there?". And oh my goodness, it was - a ship!!! The first one we've seen while at sea since leaving Las Palmas - well, the excitement of it all!!! Suddenly everyone was up and paying attention, all ideas of lunch were abandoned, the AIS was fired up to see if we could get details of what and who it was, and where it was going, and out came the binoculars. It turned out to be a cargo ship Seatrade "Southern Bay" heading from a vaguely Europe/Canaries/North Africa direction southwest to Paramaribo. Then the debate started - where on earth is Paramaribo??? It's hard to get used to not having Google at your fingertips! Eventually we found it on the chart plotter - on the border between Surinam and French Guyana. The ship, from the time we first spotted it in the far distance, to when it was about 2 mile off our port quarter, took about 20 minutes - they were doing a very smart 18kts and within another half an hour were gone out of sight. I wonder how many ARC+ boats it passed near to, and were they all as excited as we were?

That little flurry of activity over, thoughts returned to lunch. The menu is definitely moving into the more "interesting" and "experimental" phase these days!! Banana bread and Christmas cake for breakfast as an alternative to the usual weetabix or muesli (bizarrely I haven't had a single breakfast yet on this trip - not sure why or how!), last night's dinner was a tapas of crackers, tinned tuna with mayo, sweetcorn, Emmenthal cheese, and a delicious-looking bruschetta (if you like tomatoes which I unfortunately most resolutely don't!) made by Laura on Conor's freshly made brown bread. Lunch today was brown bread, baked beans and some fried ham which approximated to rashers if you squinted hard and didn't think too much about it. All very delicious, and reminded me of many conversations I've had with various friends on offshore races about the stuff you eat on boats that you'd NEVER contemplate even looking at ashore! However I fear that my mother's prediction about food (ie stodge) consumption and activity (or lack thereof) on board may finally be coming true!!

Poor Dermot is still hanging off the back of the boat day and night desperately trying to persuade a fish - any fish - to bite, but still no joy. So regretfully he had to take some of the dwindling meat stock out of the "freezer" for tonight's dinner, which he's rostered to make. I'm sure it'll be delicious - there will be no complaints from me or Laura anyhow!!

One thing I've been meaning to say in this blog for days is a big thanks to everyone - friends, family and even some strangers who have happened upon us randomly on the ARC+ website - who has emailed us with news, fleet news, boat positions, weather, and just general chat or a "hello" - you've no idea how welcome it is when a new message pops up in the inbox with news from outside our tiny little watery world! Keep them coming, we love 'em!

Also, while we know that comments can be left after our blog posts on the ARC+ website, we have no access to that site out here - so if you've left a question or a comment and we haven't responded, that's the reason why - we're not just being lazy or rude, honestly! We're all really looking forward to looking back through everything when we get back to proper internet and wifi.

Well, the spinny is back up again (for I think the third time today!), the sun is shining, Laura is on watch so it's back out with my latest book to try and find a shady spot I go (they're at a serious premium here).... 'tis a hard life!!

Endeavour - over and out.


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