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EH01 - Day 7-8



Apologies for the delay – we’ve been busy sun bathing, fishing, cooking and whale watching...but our in-house blogger will tell you more about that.
We’ve been in light and very fluky winds since Saturday and have made only very slow progress. It looks like the boats ahead of us got into a better breeze earlier and disappeared while we’ve been working hard to keep the boat moving. Based on the latest forecast we should be in slightly stronger winds from tomorrow and pick up the pace. Our routing shows that we still have to head south-west for another day or two and then we can turn directly to St Lucia. We all look forward to seeing proper trade wind conditions.
 
Hello hello from EH01 Marketing Director.
Well that was what the Performance Yacht Racing brochure promised... On Saturday night we had a fab balmy evening and the star gazing season was in full force using Gill`s star “glow in the dark” map. Starkers, Andras and Storme think we identified Cassiopeia, Taurus & Gemini but wouldn`t bet the boat on it just in case some star experts beg to differ.!! It was lovely having the stars to look at it and also to guide us when helming. Sunday dawned bright and sunny and the speakers were out and we were all sun bathing in various parts of the deck, so chilled and a bit of a break after 12hour days working, we will have to get our unions on the case.!!  Then a pod of Orcha whales swam by....amazing...blowholes and all the rest.! Today we had a lot of flying fish swim by...
 
Time change
We are sailing south-west and have entered a new time zone so we are GMT –1, each of the watches just added an extra half hour onto their shift.
 
Boat barter
It didn`t take us long to dispense with normal customs and begin bartering like our ancestors. The most popular commodities are salt friendly shower gel/shampoo, clothes pegs, external battery chargers and cordial alternatives (Robinsons, i presume you are enroute..!).. The salt friendly shampoo is my key one that I have had to trade as I had the very unfortunate incident of washing shorts in a non-salt friendly product and let`s say that wasn`t the most pleasant watch.. We also trade coffee/tea making and use of solar panels for charging, it`s real back to basics trade..!
 
Boat living
Just to give you all an idea of what it is like living with 10 people on a boat, 9 guys and 1 lucky girl..! There are 4 cabins: 2 forward (the front of the boat) and 2 cabins aft (the back of the boat) and Andras the skipper has his own as he is managing both watches and also for his hot tub security..! We all share one head (toilet) which can be reached through the forward cabins (these are 4foot x 7foot) and any washing of dishes, clothes and oneself is done with salt water, fresh water is ONLY to be used for drinking, hot drinks and some cooking. A hot bunk system is used which means that both of the watches use the cabin when you are off watch so everything needs to be stored neatly which is a bit of a problem for some of the more “dynamic” crew! Also some of the sailing gear, boots and shoes have become quite smelly due to the change in weather conditions and luckily we had a Surfachem Shoe deodoriser whose active ingredient masks the smell and breaks down the bacteria which cause it.
 
At the moment we only have 5 knots of breeze and are hoping this to fill in and the stars to come out for our night watches, we have sailed 1272nm and have @ 1700nm to go to sail to the Caribbean...!!
 
The EH01 Marketing director Out

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