Day 8 on Fizz and we are currently heading on a course of about 225 M. We are trying to make the most of the E/ESE wind that is forecast for the next 20h or so. the plan then is to gybe onto a course +/- heading for St Lucia. We are not quite south enough but when the wind backs we will have to gybe.

Life onboard is very pleasant today. Yesterday was abit trying with lumpy seas and winds up to 30kn at times, its hard to move around when the conditions are like that.The repair on the genoa is holding up well, touch wood. Yesterday one of the battens in the main hopped out of the pocket on the luff end, not quite sure how it happened as it is seated into a plastic receiver at the luff and held in place with an allen bolt at the leech end, anyway we dropped the main sorted the problem and were up and running again in 15/20 mins.

Its amazing what goes wrong on a boat, even the kettle needed attention yesterday as the handle was getting loose, when is the last time you had to dothat at home??

This morning is really good, sun is up and we are beam to close reaching at 7.5 - 8 kn. good breakfast of muesli soaked in apple juice for 10 min and topped with fresh pineapple and mango. I really think we are being far too healthy as we had a vegetable stew with morcels of beef , and great flavouring bits thanks to Tim, it tasted great.

alot of the softer fruits have had to be given to the flying fish as they were starting to drip from the fruit and veg hammocks.

This mornings survey of the rigging, deck, sails etc shows everything looking ok, thankfully. Just about to get ready to take part in the SSB radio net, this is used to communicate with other boats and report the noon utc position to the net controller. we missed it 2 days ago when we were doing the genoa repairs so i'm sure our position on the arc website looks a bit dodgy.

Anyway, must go, Hi to all at home from Chris, Tim, Kevin and myself. All are in good shape aboard and hopefully we will post another entry tomorrow. Thanks to all who are sending emails, hope the updates here give you an idea of what is going on in mid atlantic.