The Sausage makes it wait felt....
Cat-man-do
Wed 5 Dec 2007 06:11
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Here we are, rampaging Westwards, at 2 O Clock in
the morning under incredible star laden skies with a good breeze and managing to
sustain a very credible 7-8 knots for the last few hours. All's well with the
world apart from our party having been postponed. Thanks to the Sausages ability
in these sort of winds to give us a good turn of speed it's also got us through
the half way point a good few hours earlier than expected and even us hardy
souls couldn't really face the Wine Gums and Ice cream in the early hours so
we'll have to wait and have our "do" tomorrow (see, "wait" in the
title wasn't spelt wrong. And you thought this stuff was just thrown
together!)
Today's been a good day with decent mileages
made in "proper" trade wind conditions, we're all keeping our fingers crossed it
lasts a good while yet.
It's somewhat strange that we are out here
in quite literally thousands of miles of open ocean and twice in
the last couple of days we've had to change our course to avoid
actually hitting another yacht. The first occasion was an American boat
"Blue Heron" which you can almost understand, with it going to/from the same
place. The second however was a French yacht that even after our avoidance
passed close enough to see the people stood on deck sortng sails out. This boat
wasn't even part of this event but managed to pass within a couple of hundred
yards of us, out here in the middle of the ocean...
Rebel T this afternoon were 77miles South East of
us, so to be honest it's still anyone's guess who'll get to the line first.
Although we are further West, they have managed to go further South and may pick
up better winds as the days go on. We'll have to wait and see.
We had another phone call today from Simon and
Andrew on Gertha 4 to wish us "Happy Halfway" which we thought was a lovely
gesture. We did rally Portugal with Simon and Andrew who are sailing the socks
off a Hanse 370 with Simons' daughter Steph along for the ride this
time.
Things here are definitely improving in the crew
welfare situation too. The big problem with a trip like this is that you spend
half the night awake on watch and when the day finally arrives you don't want to
miss anything, so you stay awake even when really tired. This then repeats
itself the following night and you get more and more exhausted. We've now all
realised that you have to sleep sometime and are getting much better about
having a sleep during the day. It has to be said that it makes the times you are
awake so much better when you're not exhausted, so it's worth losing a few hours
for sleep during the day.
We had concerns when we left about provisioning of
food and water supplies having never done anything like this before and not
actually knowing how long it's going to take. However we seem to be doing fine
and have plenty of supplies to last us somewhat longer than we hope it'll take
to get there. We may not be eating the most healthy diet in the world, but it's
not that bad either (come on, with 4 men in a boat you didn't really expect too
much in the "Healthy options" range, did you?)
You may remember that I said I'd ask the others to
do a page for blog, so I have.
Robert's been busy most of the day today writing
page after page of notes for his blog page day, so I'm looking forward to
reading that. Howard has promised to do his on the 7th, to coincide with his
Birthday, Oooh another party!!!
Myself and Howard are on watch now until 6 in the
morning and although Peter doesn't realise it yet, to ensure they don't start
the party without us, I've hidden his Wine Gums !!
It could all end in
tears :O)
Sleep well and stay safe.
Love to you all
Brian xx
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