13:09.1N 48:34.5W

Jonnie nudged into Friday’s territory in the blog yesterday so the fair weather and nice steady winds with Big Blue soaring was the order of events. Delicious food continues with Richard pulling a chilli con carne out the bag and a wonderful salad for lunch. Somehow we’re still going strong with avocados, of all things, refusing to ripen. Oranges and apples are dwindling but still keeping us in tasty breakfasts for a good few more days. A thermos has been put to excellent use extending our yoghurt supplies with Charlotte in charge of yoghurt brewing. Thank you Emma for including this, delicious! Dried fruit and nuts are endless and we have a plentiful supply of tinned food and cabbages galore! Biscuits also, many many biscuits left. Chocolate is, however, running short…

Dolphins on Friday off the port bow, not very interested in us though. Lots of splashing, jumping and thrashing around made us think of a broad sardine bait ball or similar. I swear I saw big tuna leaping higher than any dolphin ever could. Dolphins at dawn this morning, 2 playing at the bow for 15minutes joined by around 10 others before shooting off to starboard for faster sport. Hot today, very hot with naps all around in attempts to get out of the suns rays. A sea water bucket shower followed by quick fresh water rinse is an extremely effective cool down mechanism despite sea water temp of 26.9 C clocked yesterday… Skipper has run through Gnomonic charts (sp?) and our route so far plus projected continued route. We’re aiming for a narrow channel of favourable winds between areas of slack flow south of the main fleet, we’ll see how that works out. Light winds just now but spinnaker is up with our homemade ‘knitting’ (coined by Peter) rigged to help prevent spinnaker wrap around mishaps. We’ll still need to motor most of Tuesday by the looks of things before winds pick up again for arrival St Lucia later in the week! Moral definitely higher on board when we’re making progress but even the slower days remain very positive with crew looking out for each other and generally getting along. Richard and Peter were a cause for concern the other day when I saw them hurling colourful insults at one another, turned out they were having a ‘be nasty to each other’ day. The language originating from Peter’s Young Hornblower and Richard’s Treasure Island recent literary experiences. All well, happy and remaining healthy with all teeth still in gums and no sign of scurvy.

Will (by skipper: foredeck monkey, cook extraordinaire, quiz maestro, met master)