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El Mundo - Tuesday 4th December



God is good! God is great! What a difference 24 hours can make. Compare to torrential rain and wild seas yesterday, this morning we have classic radewinds sailing - a F5/6 from the port quarter, blue skies, cotton wool
white clouds and a gently heaving sea. El Mundo bubbles, and hisses, and urfs forward across the sea, her rig occassionally chattering to itself, reating a creamy white wake behind her; flying fish head butt the waves round us; the occassional bird wheels about; and fish remain stubborn in heir refusal to take our line. But we do have an a snow white egret sitting on the ship's rail by the cockpit, hitching a ride for a while.

Mind you the sea can still create surprises and will occassionally give us a good slapping just to remind us we are here by the sea's permission and that we should avoid becoming complacent. These slappings are generally quite localised in their impact. We had one such slapping yesterday. We had settled down in the cockpit for afternoon tea and Robert was in the middle of one of his rather endearing rants about society and the world. I think the target for his attack this time was the City, bankers, plutocrats and bureaucrats. Suddenly the sea gave us a slap and this column of white water reared up behind Robert - time seemed to stand still for several seconds - and then it dumped itself on Robert who was cut off in mid-rant. There was one of those moments of intense silence which could go either way - either an explosion of abuse against the environment; or a shrug of the shoulders. Dee was the first to emit a stiffled giggle - Dee has a great giggle by the way. Robert stomped off down the campanionway (I am not sure it is possible to stomp down a companionway but no doubt you get my drift) and entered the forward heads to dry off and change. I watched the heads deck hatch open a fraction. Now to be fair I had warned Dee and Robert about opening deck hatches at sea. On my last ARC I used to sleep with my aft cabin hatch open a fraction until one night a wave came over the stern and dumped half the Atlantic on my sleeping form - how can so much water squeeze through such a small crack? Anyway - I digress; I watched the forward heads deck hatch open slightly. There is a certain inevitability about some events don't you think - do you ever get that feeling you know exactly what is going to happen before it happens? Well we got another good slapping but this time the sea deposited itself on the forward heads hatch and there was this terrible sound of water pouring into a confined space. Now I consider myself quite worldy but even I learnt words that were new to me. Eventually Robert emerged from the heads in what appeared to be commando form wearing rather fetching orange oilskin trousers with black shoulder straps and not much else. Now Robert is a largish (albeit perfectly formed) man - I am sure he would agree - so I shall leave the rest to your imagination.

Good news! I have found guitar man. At the stern of the boat there is a whip antenna on a pole. At certain wind angles the ensign which is rather big - I like a big ensign; no jokes about cars with long bonnets pleeeeeease - strikes the whip antenna and plays tunes - I kid you not.

I referred to our tea-time discussions. These are rather fun. Subjects so far have been as diverse as is there life in the universe to the merits of having a bottom like Philippa Middleton; from the state of the economy to Phillippa Middletons' bottom; from the merits of the Royal Family to whether blue water has more natural life in it than green water (just to demonstrate we are not THAT predictable in our conversations!). Dee wants me to mention at this point that at no time did she enter into the discussion about Phillipa Middleton's bottom - although she did make what I thought were a couple of rather catty comments about Philippa Middleton's party book.

More good news! - we learn Kate and Wills are going to have a baby. Well thank goodness we can all stop speculating about when. No doubt the subject will come up at our tea-time discussion.

But aside from all of the above we are all well and should cross the half-way point to St Lucia this afternoon. That's 1400 miles in a stab over seven days. Amazing. Hopefully today's weather is what we can expect for
the rest of the trip and we can quietly forget the terrors and trials of the last few days.

Now for today's El Mundo brain-teaser.

Question number 6 (or is it 5? - I am beginning to lose track!)

An ARC navigator asked his skipper for some help with passage planning. He
asked him to multiple three and four three times. What would be your answer?


As always, have fun.

And as always our love to all those ashore who matter to Jonathan, Dee, Robert and Nick.

This is yacht El Mundo. Ovvvvveeeerrrrrr aaannndd out!

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