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Challenger 2 - Challenger 2 Day 11 Entry 2



Another beautiful sunrise started the day as we were pushed west by the steady breeze that seems to have settled aft of the beam. Quite an eventful day that will be remembered for a birthday, a blow out, and a Bolognese.

We celebrated Heather’s birthday with great fanfare. By 10am she was sitting in the saloon wearing an ‘I’m 60’ badge, surrounded by cards her family had packed for her. Cakes were baked, songs were sung, and Monkey broke out the fizzy drinks and chocolate bars. The volume of cake being consumed on this trip would make Paul Holiday proud. The quality… he may take issue with.

We worked off the cake with a spinnaker hoist that went remarkably smoothly. However, as we gathered in the cockpit for a Monkey moment, fate intervened. Monkey was talking through the douse procedure and noticed that there was a tear growing along a seam. The tear became a rip, the rip became much more. So, within 5 minutes of hoisting our billowing battle flag we were dousing a sad and rapidly deteriorating bed sheet. I can confirm for insurance purposes that conditions were light and the tear appeared without human intervention. Get the sail maker on the phone and ask for a refund!

Kathryn, John, and Laurence did a fantastic job on Mother watch kicking us off with pancakes with all the trimmings for breakfast. They followed that with baked potatoes with a luxurious assortment of toppings for lunch. This included tuna from a can because our fishing endeavour remains fish-less. They closed out the day with a very good supper of pasta and Bolognese sauce. The sauce, naturally, was made from scratch.

All in all a good day. The only other things worth mentioning are that just before Thursday became Friday, at around 23:48 to be exact, our distance to destination dipped below 1000 nautical miles. A big moment for the boat, made bigger by earlier revelations that John is a close friend of the guy who owns the bar ‘Spinnakers’ in St Lucia. Rum, rum, here we come!

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