Wednesday 5th December 2007

Riding the Waves

Well its blowing a gale out there today and the waves are huge. Becci, Captain Pugwash and I have been sitting under the spray hood looking backwards at the huge waves and comparing the huge stomach churning ups and downs to rides at Alton Towers. You really have to wedge yourself in today or you'll go flying. As I'm sitting here writing this I've got one foot jammed against the central bench in the saloon to stop me sliding off sideways into the walkway, I've got one arm hooked around the end of the nav station table to stop the laptop going flying and anything not tied down is crashing around me. Fun, fun!

Last night when we checked the position reports we were 171st in the fleet, today when we checked again we are 137th. Hey, hey, not bad. All thanks to the gales blowing upstairs today.

Following the broken diagonal, Mark has been on the phone to a rigging expert friend in Barcelona this morning for some advice about the rigging situation and on his advice has been out on deck with various tools making adjustments to the backstays. Also today we suffered from failure of the boats laptop. It now refuses to boot and we were all pretty concerned as its one of our most important links with home for email etc, and also for getting weather information, sending reports back and forth regarding the fuel cell etc. Luckily James had also bought his laptop with him, so after installing some software on it, we're up and running again. Great news.

The highlight of the day so far has been lunch. Becci and I warmed up some part baked baguettes and filled them with chicken, sweetcorn and mayonaise. After that we had some tinned fruit with tinned cream which was actually far nicer than it sounds. There are big plans for a beef stew or Sheppards Pie tonight with the last of the fresh meat but we'll have to see what the conditions are like later.

Til tomorrow.

Justine