Approximately 120nm covered since our last update; and varied conditions. We had enough wind to keep sailing all night which was fantastic and despite a bit of swell making it bumpy we had our first meal down below whilst under full sail which was quite exciting… We are practising for Christmas dinner in the Atlantic already!!

We had a reasonably comfortable night both getting plenty of rest when off watch with Meep keeping the bunk warm for us and taking these duties very seriously.

The day broke with heavy cloud surrounding us and we were so convinced we would see a squall come through that we got our wet weather gear on and prepared ourselves for a dowsing. An hour later we were stripping back down to swimmies and t-shirts as the skies cleared and the sun blazed through again.

Late morning we started to lose the wind a bit and by midday we were down to 3kts consistently and reluctantly turned the engine on again. This is when we discovered our autopilot had packed up and insisted on motoring us around in circles and instantly we regretted not calibrating our new tiller pilot before leaving Gibraltar which would have given us a good back up. Jamie set about investigating what the problem was while I helmed; which in nearly flat seas with absolutely nothing around us was a task so tediously easy that I ended sitting in my favourite spot with one foot on the helm making tiny adjustments if we started to wander off course and wondering if we really needed to bother fixing the autopilot at all!!! Needless to say Captain Incredible had the whole thing apart and found the problem and a temporary solution to work around it and within a couple of hours I was relieved of my duties and despatched to the galley to make lunch. Shortly after 4 o’clock the wind filled in again and we were able to lift all sails and turn the engine off.

We have had a lovely couple of hours under sail with conditions currently idyllic. Meep has been up above decks with us enjoying the fresh air although he took some coaxing out of his bunk – he might be taking his bunk warming responsibilities a little TOO seriously now!

So another good day aboard Hamble Warrior... if conditions remain as they are (which they rarely do) then by tonight we will be approaching the mid-point in our passage to the Canaries. It feels like it is going so quickly.

We are delighted to have the Sat phone functioning and be able to get weather updates; although so far they haven’t been terribly accurate but it is reassuring to be able to check the expected conditions. We are also pleased we have been able to send these updates although we won’t know until we arrive in the Canaries if you have been able to access them. I do hope so. We didn’t want to share the link until we knew this was working so perhaps if it is Sis you could share the link to my Facebook page as we discussed?