We’re making good progress down the Portuguese coast and are now 2/3rds of the way down, about 100nm off Lisbon.  The weather remains amazingly kind, with gentle breezes from decent directions, and we celebrated passing the ½-way point of our passage to Las Palmas at some stage yesterday.  The forecast remains good.

Life onboard has settled into a very happy routine – sleep, eat, keep watch, sleep, eat, keep watch, with a bit of maintenance and husbandry to both boat and individual snuck in for good measure.  Wattie’s fo’c’sle PT session wasn’t as well attended as Jon’s bad-back stretching session!  Following good Naval tradition, we’re now in 4-hour watches, with 2 dogwatches from 1600-1800 and 1800-2000 so that we switch routines and sleep disruption every other day.  The Last Dog (1800-2000) has become our happy hour(s) – a much looked forward to event.  Very pleased (and relieved) to report that the ship’s booze locker has been found, Wattie the quizmaster has reminded us how little we know (or remember), and as ever our food has been genuinely amazing.  Thank you Claire (and all who contributed)!

Highlights from the last 24 hours have been many – stunning night skies, shooting stars, dolphins, leaping tuna, flying fish, beautiful sunset and sunrise, Astro navigation classes and I’m sure more.  But trumping all of those, was a blue whale and her calf (we were confidently told by David Attenborough (aka George)), swimming gently by about 200-300 yards on our starboard side during Happy Hour - hugely exciting for us all and an unexpected bonus.  Sadly the attached photo doesn’t really do it justice, but is the best we managed to get!!

Much love to you all,

Jon

PS Charlotte’s reference to the crocodile yesterday was of course referring to a crocodile-looking cloud, just before sunrise!