Parson Jack - We have reached half way

After yesterday it was very nice to have a quiet day.  The weather has been stupendous and we have been cracking along at 7 knots most of the day in bright sunshine, the sea is 25 degrees and Craig and Lindsay have sat on the rail for much on the afternoon dangling her feet in the foam. Steve has modified the water-maker again; we are now on version three. We have decided to put a reef in to reduce stress on the foresails and sheets, we are still getting good speed and have picked up the North Equatorial Current which is giving us an additional half to one and a half knots

Another outcome of yesterday's debacle is that Stef's back looks like a Swiss army knife, red with a white cross in the middle - a tool, but not as useful.

I thought you might be interested in how we organise our days and nights. we  have three watches Susie and Lindsay - Lima watch, Stef and Craig - Charlie watch and me and Steve - Delta watch. Charlie watch covers 2000 to midnight and 0800 to midday, Lima from 0400 to 0800, midday till 1400 and cook the evening meal between 1700 and 1900 and Delta from midnight till 0400 and 1800 till 2000. This means that Charlie and Lima watches get a full eight hour sleep period, poor old Delta gets sleep when it can. Happy hour starts at 1600.

To confuse things further we do our hourly logs on GMT and operate the watch system on ships time which moves progressively as we head west; 1 hour every 15 degrees of longitude, so at the moment GMT is 1840 and ship's time is 1640; two hours earlier.

Are you still awake…I will be asking questions later!

We awoke this morning to find flying fish on the deck, funny looking creatures; grey with wings. Steve reckons they are delicious and asserts that he has had flying fish sandwiches the last time he was in the Barbados; yeah!

We celebrated arriving at the half way point of our voyage this morning (1417 NM) with scrambled eggs and salmon and a bottle of carver and some freshly baked  bread, courtesy on Craig who is now the ships designated master baker.

There has been an interesting development on the drinks front; the white wine we bought in Las Palmas turns out to be dry sherry, hic. it takes some getting used to but Susie is persevering!

Lots of Love, The Crew, xxx