A significant day today as we reach the halfway mark. There are those lucky ones who will already have Carribean Islands in sight already and we congratulate them for that. Also wish we were nearer to! However life goes on at this petty pace and we are having fun. The sailing over the last week has been terrific. Coasting down the rollers which surges the boat on is just the best. Yesterday we had the cruising chute up for most of the daylight hours and managed 7 knots on average. We decided to take it down as the wind hit over 25 knots for a spell. Course you can never predict these things but then the wind dropped and we spent a very frustrating set of watches trying to fill the gib in less than 5 knots of wind which meant the days gain was lost.
The ladies managed to tie even with the gents in the Beanie stakes yesterday so its all to play for today.
The rations are lasting well and last night was a variation on the fat willy sausage recipe created those many months ago in Kinsale. I am pleased to report that no gale force wind followed the consumption of the latest one! In the increased temperatures we are finding that we are drinking much more water and not nearly as interested in food as we were last week. There have been no stray forays into the bicky lockers on night watches, indeed not even a sookie sweetie.
We have decided to move the clocks forward 2 hours today. The cabin clock will remain on UTC so we can keep up our radio checks etc but our watches are needing adjusted and this seems to be a reasonable way to do it. When we started the journey the early evening watch was nipping below around 7.00 and it was dark. Last night I had wakened from my early nap to find that it was still light at 9.00. The moon has been amazing this past week and has lit our way. Night watches have been heard to hum 'I was rolling along on moonlight bay - you can hear the rollers breaking along the way' Or 'I got the moon in the morning and the sun at night' which of course is what we have. The moon went down after 9.00 a.m. today. Anyway hopefully we will readjust and get a tad more sleep in hours of darkness.
Think we need to start doing a little more serious sailing actually! The boys are working on it now. They have the chute up and have poled out the gib as well. We have gone from lollopy to rock n roll heaven help us if the thunderstorm squalls decide to play Murphy with us!.
Fair wainds and safe passage to all of you.