As you will have gathered, we’re off!  Happy New Year everyone!

The satphone has just warbled which means that MailaSail have pinged in our noon position.  We find from the log that we have covered 170 miles in 24 hours, which is good.  The trouble is the good speed comes at a price; steady force 6 winds which create some significant waves.  The boat swings, surges and dives which is all very well but it makes cooking, and anything else, difficult.  Even sleeping.  Everything rattles and we have jammed sponges into all the lockers.  All the experts say that the second night at sea is the worst, so we are expecting to be more comfortable from now on.

We left La Gomera at 1700 on the 30^th and we have travelled 296 miles of the 2700 or so in total.  To our very great disappointment Chris and Sue decided that they could not put themselves out of reach of their family for the foreseeable future so we are on our own. 

We liked La Gomera and could easily have spent much more time there but we both felt that bullets had to be bitten, nettles grasped and so forth, so here we are.

There is not much incentive to do more than sail, cook, eat, wash up and sleep so any blogs at this stage will be shortish.  Nevertheless we will try.  Must dash.  The filet mignon de porc is just coming out of the oven!