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Aretha - Water Maker Dramas, 80's Throwbacks and Zambian National Improvisation Day.



Aretha - 17 04 North, 46 32 West.

It doesn’t take much to transform the excellent into outstanding.

Today all it took was a small silver disc from the 1980’s. A CD to be precise. Sash and Equador. Don’t think i have listened to that in over 15 years now. In seconds Aretha was transformed to a pumping dance floor. Willow and Bluebell doing their moves downstairs, Paul and Caspar on the poop deck throwing some shapes and getting down to good some dance tunes. The buzz is infectious and soon enough all are involved. We might not win prizes for being first to St Lucia but put us on a dance floor and its a different story.

Pressure and breeze has built today and we’re now in South Easterly 15-18 knots of breeze flying along at 8 knots.

Every morning we have a values prize for the child and adult who have best demonstrated our values as a boat. After this we set something new for the day. Today we decided was the National Improvisation Day in Zambia. Each person had to give an object to the person on their left to improvise with. Results will be in tomorrow.

Today’s drama was the water maker. After running it for 3 hours we checked and the water levels hadn’t risen in the tanks. All the water was being dumped. We changed the settings and tested the product. It tasted fine and we ran it for 4 more hours to top up the water. Half way through and our seacock mover on board forgot the water maker was running. The seacock on the water maker outlet got closed. Within a second the pipe had blown. Lesson learnt - we had spare pipe and its all been repaired and is back up and running.

Lunchtime saw another cockpit swimming pool. This time full of fairy liquid and each child equipped with a sponge to polish the cockpit. Double whammy - kids having fun and a clean boat to boot.

School work is progressing well - we spent today on climate change and what we need to do protect the worlds oceans. This was followed by taking water samples for the project to measure plastic levels in the sea across the Atlantic. All good stuff and it feels the children are paying more attention.

Supper was Roast Beef with all the trimmings and a half glass of Cune Rioja each to celebrate crossing the sub 1000 miles mark.

Been meaning to mention for ages too the wildlife. Every day we see flying fish. Aretha clearly disturbs the water and sends them flying - every morning we find fish on deck. They are remarkable and beautiful with their large wings and seem to glide for ages over the water. A lovely sight to watch.

It’s strange to reflect on how we’ve come now. The charts on the Chart Plotter show a very different view to the one 3 months ago. As I look over, names such as Georgetown, Guyana, Venezuala. Costa Rica, Honduras, Cuba and Florida show in front of us. Plenty more adventures lie ahead as we now start to plan for our travels to Panama and then beyond into the Pacific.

Over and out from a very hot Aretha on a balmy Atlantic evening.


PS please no attachments in any replies - it costs a fortune to download anything other than plain text.


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