It’s now day 6, and after waiting for so long doing very little mileage, digesting reports of suspected pirate vessels and how we ourselves would deal with such an attempt to board us, and staring at our fishing rod (‘Rodney’) wondering why he isn’t performing, we have finally managed to pick up a steady and lasting (touch wood) north easterly breeze and are cruising along at over 7 knots SOG. The boat has changed its rhythm and as the wind is only fresh its quite a roly poly dance routine at the moment, making for many stumbles whilst getting into gear or (as in the case of dad right now) mid air levitation when attempting to get fruit out of the fruit nets. Our days consist of a nice routine starting at about 10 (everyone has generally regained the sleep they lost during their night watches by this time) with breakfast that if we’re lucky (about every 2-3 days) consists of bacon and eggs, or normally fruit and cereal (hence dads efforts at the fruit nets this morning, in which he has finally managed to secure a couple of bananas and a kiwi!). By 11 that’s all tidied away, and we then run the engine, water-maker and the laptop for a few hours, and discuss optimum sail configurations for the current breeze. The rest of the afternoon involves early dinner preparations, other maintenance, and a fierce amount of sudoku! As evening draws near, everyone eases into the night watch system (three on, six off) and those on the graveyard shift (from two until five in the morning, so called because it’s an ungodly hour that doesn’t have the pleasure of a sunrise) hit their bunks for some pre-emptive rest. The nights have passed reasonably quickly so far, watching shooting stars, enjoying the moonrise (currently the shape of the smile of the Cheshire cat from ‘Alice in wonderland’), guessing what marine life is causing our depth sounder to jump to relatively shallow depths, and discussions of every subject and variety. It is time to sign off for now, set up Rodney in the hope of early morning success, and (as it is my turn to shower) sit in the indoor monsoon and very skilfully move with the boat in order to stay under the flow in the hope of rinsing off all the soap.

Dave 25/11/05

23’22 N 19’04 W