Day 32
After the wet and miserable day yesterday
we have been rewarded with sunshine and fair conditions today. Blue skies;
white fluffy clouds and calm seas. Winds have been force 3-4 and we have managed to make 4 to 4.5kts of speed average for most of the day. We have had the
headsail poled out and been sailing wing-on-wing under full sail and pointing
in the right direction!
With conditions on board comfortable we have been
able to get a few jobs done. Just general housekeeping but it's amazing how
much easier it is when we are gently rolling along and not lurching violently
from side to side! I used some of our excess rainwater from yesterday to do
some more laundry and Jamie has been making dough for fresh bread and took out
the bins!!! We haven't really mentioned about rubbish up to this point but it
is something we have had to give careful consideration to knowing how long we
will likely be at sea for. Today Jamie took the second bin bag of the trip up
to our anchor locker to be disposed of when we find facilities ashore. We have
been separating out recyclables; crushing them and storing them in a large
olive barrel in the forepeak. We have a 1litre plastic bottle that we use for
all plastic wrappings and we wash these; cut them into shreds and place them in
the bottle, compressing them with a wooden spoon handle every now and again to
make space for more. It is amazing how much plastic you can fit into one
bottle. The idea for this came from a friend we met in Lefkas several years ago
and the idea is that; properly compressed, once full these bottles make what
are called "eco bricks" which can be used for actual building
projects. Since we left Greece we haven't come across anywhere collecting these
eco-bricks but they do serve the purpose of efficiently compressing and storing
plastic waste which is ideal for life aboard. Our first bottle lasted over a
month and we have just started filling our second one recently. Of our other
waste we are cleaning and stowing glass jars as we believe these might be
useful for storing goods we might want to trade in some of the more remote
Pacific islands. Flour; sugar, rice, even cleaning products and cosmetics can
be exchanged for fresh produce in many of these places, or offered as gifts.
The only waste that goes overboard is organic waste and although we have always
had a clean-wake policy when coastal cruising we have ceded to throwing
vegetable peelings and other food scraps (including a lot of rotten eggs)
overboard whilst in an ocean*.
We started our day listening to a Frank Skinner
podcast as per our usual Saturday morning ritual and this will be our final
Saturday where we can do this as today's was the last remaining download; all
our previous ones have now expired. Fortunately we hope that next Saturday will
signal our last Saturday before we make landfall - hopefully! We did our few
jobs and then spent most of the afternoon reading and chatting. Our bag of
books waiting to go to the next book swap we see now has nearly as many books
in it as our bookshelf! It's a pretty mixed bag too; everything from an exposé
on the mystery man behind the great train robbery, Mills & Boon, thrillers
by Peter James, Dean Koonz & Ian Rankin to a heartbreaking account by a
Syrian Journalist of her time undercover in her homeland and the autobiography
of Comedian Sarah Millican... so pretty varied!
Our conversation as it often does turned to what
we might do after our circumnavigation and where we might settle; if we do
settle, for a few years. This is always an interesting chat and ends up with us
talking nostalgically about the places we love on the South coast of the UK and
getting misty-eyed over memories of cosy pubs and curry houses in the likes of
Gosport, Hamble and Falmouth. It also gets us talking of our favourite places
we have spent longer periods during our time on Hamble Warrior; Leros,
Torrevieja and more recently Grenada. It's amazing how quickly places feel like
home when you stay for a few months.
We have just calculated our 5pm to 5pm daily run
and have managed 133nm in the last 24 hours. The lively conditions overnight
boosted our daily run somewhat as today has been fairly calm; slow and steady!
Overall though we are very happy with that progress. If we can make a few more 130+ days we will be able to start planning our arrival date!
*Please note this does NOT include tea bags which
contrary to popular belief are NOT organic waste as most contain plastic and do
not belong in the sea...[climbs back off soapbox]
