Sabine - blog update for Sabine (118) 29 Nov 2022

Hello interweb friends, Captain Stape on sail boat Sabine right here (///attraction.addition.reallocation)
The answer to the question I’m sure is on all your beaks, sorry, lips: banana cake - that’s what Richard told me he’d decided on. And he’d have some for breakfast. And so would I. However, it seems that forces were working against as when he got up, he found the banana cake had leapt from the saloon table onto the floor! Ahh well, the best laid plans of parrots and men.
Before I went to bed there was a boat near us: Ariel. John was the lucky person on watch when it came close enough for him to actually see the nav lights at about 2.6nm. This is the first vessel actually seen for about 5 days. That’s very exciting!
We had sail boat Kikaro behind us during the morning, but heading in a different direction it disappeared before lunchtime. Still, it’s good to know we’re not alone out here.
Big drama! The microwave is broken! Well, the sole remaining knob for the microwave, which has to be swapped side-to-side depending on whether you want to select the cook setting or the cook time, is now broken. It’s lying on the side, awaiting super glue. After some questioning, and initially denying all knowledge, and then finding some suspect pliers around, it seems that the last person to try to use the microwave was Polina. For the next hour Kia poked fun at her, listing all the foods we now can’t heat up.
Good news my interweb friends: Richard has had a shower!! Well, when he told me, he was making air-quotes with the word “shower”. He described the process: stand or crouch over a bucket whilst holding the shower head and allow your head to get wet(ish) with a dribble of water (maybe this is why the bathroom compartment is called a ‘wet head’?), catching the run-off in the bucket. Apply shower gel and wash. Rinse with as little water as possible. Repeat this process for other parts of the body, contorting yourself into all manner of shapes and positions in order to catch as much water as possible in the bucket. When done, dry yourself and then with the captured water, add a little detergent and wash your smalls.
This sounds both extremely faffy and horrific in equal measures. The boat now looks like Widow Twanky’s laundrette on washing day with all of Richard’s washing pegged along the outside.
(Richard confided to me that one thing he’s planning to do when back on shore is to turn on a tap and just watch the water flow, without restrictions - it’s strange what people miss!)
Today Richard decided to open the ‘Open in case of emergency’ box that his friend Bob gave to him before the voyage. Whilst there was no emergency as such, Richard felt the time was right. He’s clearly missing home. On opening he was delighted to find 1 ship biscuit (thank you to Sue), and several packets of traditional British boiled sweets. These were viewed and then tasted with some trepidation by Kia and Polina, but Richard was straight in, stuffing his mouth with several of each!
More trivia-type questions are being asked by Kia to which we don’t know the answer for sure.
Q: what is the most common element on Earth? Richard thinks it’s hydrogen, John ducks the question explaining that he knows the most common element in the solar system, and galaxy (hydrogen), but he’s not sure about the amount on the Earth.
John takes more sextant readings and after some calculations decides we’re somewhere very far away from the North Atlantic (probably somewhere in the Indian Ocean). Then re-checks his workings, finds some errors and puts us to within 11miles of where we actually are - very impressive! And this means should our multiple navs, backup navs, and iPhone all fail, we can still navigate to our destination - maybe…
And that, dear interweb friends, is that for another day. It’s looking like a rough night (again), with gusts up to 35kts, so the crew have reefed in the sails in preparation.
This is Capt. Stape signing off with 1411nm to go. Ciao ciao squawk!