Falcon - Crossing Day 3

Distance run: 174 nautical miles. New Falcon speed record:13.1 knots. Miles to go to Grenada: 1662. Heartbeats lost - more than to be wished for!

Sunday November 20 will go down on Falcon as the night that Mother Nature gave us a bit of a spanking - and not in the good ‘cheeky adult’ way either! Our story starts on a dark and stormy night… it really was; moonless and winds gusting to 30 knots with a few rain showers! Picture poor little Winch Monkey rudely woken from his sleep in the bilge (still no promotion!) to the sound of the boom crash gybing. Rushing up the companionway, he is met with the sight of a bare-chested, muscle-ripped skipper, his shirt shredded by the tempest… ok, some artistic license has been taken here. In reality, our Ade was looking more Honeymonster than Incredible Hulk as he readied himself for the walk of death to the bow to replace the aft guy block that had been pulled from the jaws of the spinnaker pole which in turn had led to our sail mishap. With a bit of a blub, he said his final farewells to Bev, gave a sneer to Winch Monkey, and crawled his way to the mess awaiting him on the foredeck. As Ade clung to the forestay, the wildly flaying genoa sheets took the appearance of the arms of the Kraken trying to drag our skipper to a watery grave. I sense I may be losing some readers here so, to cut a long story short, this well-oiled (and possibly pant soiled) Falcon team dealt with the issue in less than 30 minutes; reasoned thinking, a clear plan, and a draw of straws to determine which poor sod went forward resulted in a well executed rescue of the situation! At least it gave us something to report back on!

In other news, how surprised were Ade and James that Uber Eats delivers to the middle of the Atlantic ocean. It must be so, as there can be no other way that Bev could have magic’d up such wonderful tasty pizzas for our dinner; she even remembered to order the extra toppings of pineapple too (controversial to many I know!). It was surely this cheese-laden dinner of champions that would provide us the cholesterol- heavy calories needed to battle Neptune’s revenge on us later that night!

On a more routine note, we continue to scoot across the waves at a most respectable pace, and keep morale high with daily events such as the iPod shuffle music hour. Tune in tomorrow for more barely credible yachting yarns aboard SV Falcon.