Half way

Lady Stardust Faro-Portugal to Barcelona - 2010
Paul Collister
Thu 7 Dec 2006 17:12
Hi All,
Well we made it to half way, the GPS says 1372 miles to go, which seems a
lot but having just done that much it seems easy now.
half way there and we have used:
1/4 tanked water
1/4 bottled water
1/8 fuel
1/8 cooking gas
1/100 food
all the carrots ( Not sure how that happened)
1/2 the fruit (rest will go in the next few days)
none off the brandy :-(
1 case of beer.
The boat is holding up really well, I just put up all the sail I can, point
her at St Lucia , then go to bed. It's not that hard this ocean sailing
thing really.
Last night (2 am) we saw the first ship for days, he popped up on the AIS (a
kind of radar thing), looked like we might hit, I called him on the VH F and
he said (in a very groggy voice) he would change course, he never did but we
missed by 2 miles so it was fine. It was a huge container ship, nice to see
someone else on this ocean for a change. I can tell from the position
reports at the world cruising centre that there are lots of boats within 100
miles or so, just can't see them.
We made a small sacrifice of my best brandy to Zeus, Dionysus and Poseidon
as we passed the halfway mark. If it turns out god is real and Zeus is made
up, then were in deep sh*t.

So I better get back to my navigation. I'm taking sun sights on the sextant
and working out our position. In reality navigation consists of keeping the
little boat icon on the chart plotter motorway, if he goes left you pull the
bottom rope on the hydrovane steering a couple of inches, if he goes right
then pull on the top rope. Eventually you arrive in tropical paradise ( i
hope)

Cheers,

Paul C.