Squalls, dolphins and celebrations – Days 5 and 6

Murphy continues to make good progress in a straight line; at noon on Sunday (2^nd December) we're 337 miles closer to St Lucia than we were two days ago. When I say “straight line”, that excludes our little excursion yesterday - those watching our track may have wondered why we stopped and did a series of wiggles and circles, even a waggle or two, during the afternoon. It wasn't that we had lost our way, but we were trying, by resetting and recalibrating the navigation system (which involves sailing in a circle) to coax the autopilot back to life. Unfortunately it didn't work, so Lazarus remains in his coffin. But, hey, who needs the gym when you can hand-steer all night through a series of squalls. They came at us thick and fast, with winds peaking at 36.7 knots and we had the sails going up and down like a fiddler's elbow (or something ruder) as conditions changed.

Wildlife

Yesterday we saw our first flying fish and in the late afternoon were visited by a pod of dolphins, which gave us a display of synchronised swimming before playing in the bow wave. Lucinda wants to thank Claire Pengelly for sharing her panning technique that enabled her to capture a number of lovely photos.

Breaking the waves                                                                    Flying dolphin

Food

Pauline (the skipper's wife) says it's all about food with him and to an extent she is right. Everyone is contributing to the cooking aboard – the last two days we have particularly enjoyed Jakes freshly baked bread, Lucinda's incredibly tasty recipe for Red Thai curry, beautifully cooked by Jeff, and a fabulous spag bol (including a special veggie version for Andrew) cooked by Lucinda while performing gymnastics of the highest order as the boat pitched and rolled wildly.

Multitasking

Who says routine has to be dull?

One little routine that we look forward to each day is Happy Hour, which starts on the dot of 18:00 hours (or when Andrew can drag himself from his bunk, if later). Happy Hour involves a gin and tonic or two (Jeff says it's not only customary, but actually obligatory) and yesterday they went down especially well as we celebrated the exact moment when we achieved the notable landmark (surely seamark? Ed.) of 2,000 miles to go, our celebration accompanied by the fabulous guitars of Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits.

Happy Hour 2000

Andrew, Lucinda, Jake and Jeff