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Mistral of Portsmouth - On passage - Day 5



Praying to the wind gods … we are still without wind and motoring. We have used half our fuel. We thought we had hit the trade winds last night and had the sails out for 2 hours with 10 to 12 knots of true wind but then the wind died. Back to motoring for an hour and then sailing again for a couple more hours. More motoring and another couple of hours blast until 4am when the wind disappeared. We have been on the motor since then. It’s been pouring with rain with heavy cloud so a bit of a miserable night without much sleep as we were up and down getting sails in and out. We have 2400 nm to go.

Many of the fleet boats are in the trades now - they are east of us and further south. We are closer to the Marquesas but need to get further south. We should find those pesky trade winds later today. In the meantime we are wallowing about with only 4 knots of wind. Rubbish.

We are definitely in a passage routine now. We eat together twice a day - cooked brunch around 11am and dinner at 5.30pm - just before our call with the rest of the fleet and before the sunsets. Our big news yesterday was fishing news - we caught an enormous tuna! Patrick gutted and filleted it so it was ceviche followed by super fresh loin of tuna - wonderful! We have enough for another 3 meals in the freezer. The wind gods are not being kind but Neptune has been good (as he should be given the sail we sacrificed to the sea across the Atlantic!)

The throat lurgy has now moved to Patrick so 3 of us not on top form but we are eating well, sleeping when we can and have just started to play some cards and some backgammon. Honestly, very little downtime on this boat!

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Catching fish then preparing ceviche!

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