37N 37W

IDEA Sailing
Idea Yacht Racing Ltd
Mon 17 Jun 2013 20:26
Hello Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls,

Due to unforseen circumstances Marc has been unable to write to you all, or just simply "all blogged out"(depending on who you ask) so the following is courtesy of a Jr crew member:

First of all apologies for our brief silence, we had a temporary issue with our satellite communication system. All is fixed now.

As I type, we are 413 miles away from the Azores, and depending on which software programme we look at we're either 77:35 hrs away, or 50:34 hrs away from our destination.

So what's new on the (very calm) ocean wave? We have been:
-Barbequing. Did not burn the boat down, hurrah!
-Showering. Twice in 11 days is sufficient, right?.
-Wildlife watching. Dolphins, Sting Rays, Sharks, Whales, Phosphorescence, and one or two crew members resembling more creature than man.
-Sort of sailing. Not much breeze out here :(
-Chilling. Literally. It's pretty cold at night.
-Fixing. See below.
-Sleeping. Because we need to.
-Breathing. Again, because we need to.
-Cooking. Because we need to eat, and it's tasty.
-Planning. Our summer season, etc. etc.
-Cleaning. Because we're domesticated like that.
-Splicing. New soft shackles, rings, strops, bracelets, sheets, etc.
-Building. On deck "Nests" made from bean bags, blankets, pillows complete with a sun shade made from rope and sleeping bags. Just add music and a lazy crew member.
-Mixing drinks. Iced tea, Iced coffee, Iced cranberry, Iced lemon/lime/ginger mix, sadly no rum until we hit terra firma.

Onboard IDEA, we rely on our generator to charge the batteries, cook hot food, and boil the kettle to make our all important coffee. Usually when things stop working they get fixed in a timely and efficient manor. When the generator briefly stopped working, all 5 crew members were at "action stations" shifting sails, ripping up floorboards, searching for components, testing batteries, hotwiring, hammering, screwing, button pushing and getting covered in oil and diesel at a millions miles an hour working on overdrive to get it up and running once again. I don't think we've ever been as productive and as motivated before! As soon as we got it back working there was a mad rush for the galley; in particular the coffee press and the kettle.

In other news, as we're getting further North, and East, it starts getting light at about 3AM, and doesn't get fully dark until 7:30 PM. Our stunning sunrises/sets are lasting longer as the sun isn't at such a steep angle to the horizon compared to the Caribbean lattitudes. Boat time is still "Caribbean Time", but we'll change to "IDEA time" in the near future.

I'll leave you with an annonymous quote: "..."

In the words of the master blogger:

TTFN - Ta Ta For Now
IDEA