Annie reads a lot and particularly around the places we visit. The Covenant by James Mitchener has been a long journey through the history of South Africa and we are currently re-reading The Tea Time Islands by Ben Fogle - or at least the part concerning his visit to St Helena. She has just finished Napoleon’s Last Island by Thomas Keneally, about Bonaparte’s time on St Helena to where he was exiled and died. Previously Mitchener’s Caribbean and South Pacific sagas have greatly enhanced our understanding of those places along with Herman Melville’s Typee and Omoo recollections of the Marquesas, as well as Fatu Hiva by Thor Heyerdahl. The difference between Annie and me is that reading for her is an informative and stimulating mental exercise (which it is for me also of course) but for me it is also soporific because I cannot concentrate on reading when there is the boat, weather or whatever to contemplate. This means, as when at home, I tend to read at bed time or between watches when I am tired and that is a sure fire trigger for instant shut eye. As a result I am usually behind Annie in subject matter and she is keen to share interesting facts about the places we are to visit. Woundingly she also maintains that I pinch her gems of information and reproduce them as my own in my blog. Scurrilous  and untrue of course but author rivalry can be pretty vicious.

Interestingly, well for me anyway, is that I love writing and without any claim to ability in this regard can knock off a blog post or just an email quickly and enthusiastically. “Interestingly“ because I have discovered that writing stimulates thinking, keeps me wide awake and passes the time at night on passage remarkably quickly. This is why my passage posts are longer and, arguably, a digression from the essential reporting of position, progress, weather and so forth. As a result we have evolved a new watch pattern which seems to be working for both of us. If I can sleep for three hours between 2100 and midnight I can then comfortably stay on watch for six hours or so followed by a couple of sleeps in the morning and afternoon. Annie gets an hour’s rest after supper, a three hour watch and then six hours or more to overcome her insomnia and get some sleep. We are now both more happily settling into the long passages ahead of us to get home by June.