It is extraordinary that , no matter how many times you see it, the night sky is a constant surpise and revelation as the mast top weaves circles above us. We are fortunate to have voyaged for so long under a full moon which sometimes seems so brilliiant but artificial that you expect to see the cast of the Mikado singing on the foredeck. We have seen comets ( or possibly the flash of passing satellites) frequently and there has been much discussion about the identity of the stars; suffice it to say that we have identified more ploughs than you will see at the Royal Agricultural Show. And inevitably we made the beginners mistake of rushing to the radar to get a fix on a brightly lit vessel that suddenly appeared on the horizon........
We were all dreading the so called "death roll" attributed to boats when down wind sailing, as the ship twists, pitches and plunges. In fact it is quite soothing providing that you do not try to sleep on your side- there lies madness. The sea state over the past few days has ranged from calm to confused, not unlike the crew. We have been anticipating squalls for some time and then we had a hooley, or indeed a collective of them. Darkening skies not just from the west but also from other points of the compass, the sky void of moon and stars and then heightening wind, lightning and lashing rain. Luckily we have been rigged conventionally with a preventer on the main and a boomed out foresail, so the boat has been stiff and controllable. Windspeeds touched 35 knots however and the boat surged to over 10 knots. We had a standby to support the helmsman - there was a plus to the squalls however, which was you could not hear the helmsman singing.
We did the conventional thing which was to put the VHF radio and the hand held GPS in the oven to serve as a makeshift Faradays Cage in case the boat was struck with lightning and the principal instruments knocked out. This action gave rise to a certain smug satisfaction until we realised that whoever was at the helm, with bare feet in water and hands on a soaking wheel, was more likely to be communicating by ouijaa board than VHF in the event of a strike. This thought rapidily gave rise to a concensus that the standby helm should station himself below......
The crewman man with the most reason to be smug however ( the clue is that he has a Canadian accent) is that the rest of us had been keenly anticipating his downfall when his heavy weather kit bought from Decathlon for £110 ( including shoes and gloves) was subjected to heavy rain. The Musto wearers however were choked when he emerged bone dry, .....the £5 watch that he bought from a Canarian street vendor however with pretentions to the vacancy created by Bernard Madoff, has purely ornamental quality.
We had a few slow days which caused us a little anxiety as we began to feel that not only would the party be over by the time that we arrived in St Lucia, but the ARC Committee might be into planning next year's event. This led to more foolhardy struggling with the twistle which ate up a good two hours in the noonday sun and left the crew feeling like extras left behind in the desert from " The Four Feathers". We got it going in its freestyle version eventually, but then, listening to our Irish sage, decided to take it down before nightfall. Prudent but deflating. That night however the ARC position reports were reasssuring - everybody seemed to be having a slow time of it.
It appears that we overdid it with the Bacterial Handwash and Liquid soap. We were all so concerned about personal hygiene and cross infection, that we stocked up enough to keep Holby City going for several years. If George Clooney were to pop out of the lazarette and say with a determined frown " Ok, guys, let's scrub up", noone would be surprised.
On the scarcity issue, somewhere in the ton of groceries put on on board was a small pot of exquisite lemon marmalade hand prepared in Sevilla by brilliant - eyed Andalucian gypsy dancers and contained in a jar that would not disgrace the Magi. Noone knew where it had gone. So each morning (we all breakfast at separate times depending on the watch) whiskers were covertly examined to see if any golden residue could be detected on the face of the guilty one. Finally, the blackguard broke down and admitted his guilt with the specious defence that it was there in plain sight all the time and he could not understand why the rest of us had not taken any ( Oh Yeah...) .The Great Irish Liberator is turning in his grave at his descendant's treachery.
The ARC briefing on rot rates held up ( Ed. Note. rot rates of vegetables, that is, - we haven't measured the crew). One large white cabbage continues to gaze accusingly at us which we suspect will result in it ending up over the side one dark night,with its screams muffled.
Finally, a blues song is in preparation by our Bristol Bard about our journey together in the hope that busking it in St Lucia will earn him enough to pay his fare home; the collective view is that his wife is likely to see him next wearing a woolly hat and looking much older if that is his only hope of raising the cash.
The Alchemy Crew