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Exody - Day 67 -".....and zero engine hours over"



So have ended most of everyone's daily updates to each other on the morning SSB radio net for the last two weeks at sea. I think I detect a sense of pride and satisfaction in the way these words are spoken since we are all well aware(rally though this is not a race!) that our ranked position will depend materially on the engine hours penalty applied by World ARC to our overall elapsed time. Apart from the first 72 hours, and then the occasional short burst to avoid a fishing boat or a squall, the whole fleet have regularly been reporting zero engine hours but today with the trades weakening in some areas, two boats reported engine use this morning.

Midafternoon today Wednesday 18th, Exody too succumbed, having spent half the night with the sails flogging about and making well under 5 knots partly in the wrong direction, then most of the morning under four knots, recording our lowest noon to noon run of the leg (132 miles, and then finally dropping to under three knots of boat speed with only four knots of wind!

We have 760 miles to run almost due west and still hope to get in next Monday/Tuesday sometime. Saw our first cargo ship in a fortnight last night - the New Pacific headed for Chile - seemed like quite an invasion of the privacy of 'our' ocean!

Two weeks into the trip, the culinary challenges change - we are eking out some items - (half a pepper, half a carrot) and we still have 1 tomato, 2 potatoes, six onions, 2 oranges, 7 apples. Cheese, bacon, sausages and ham all still keeping well in the small fridge. The baked fish last night was a treat and the remains will go into a kedgeree tonight - the line goes back out tomorrow. A pizza was made from first principles yesterday with mostly non-perishable ingredients and we are rediscovering all that we bought and stowed in the depths of our lockers and working out how to combine them for best effect!

Peter (Skipper)

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