Things can change quickly at sea - how a squeak from the end the boom ended up with the skipper having another swim in the Atlantic...

But first of all back to the normal stuff - another good trade wind sailing day but with slightly stronger winds (22 - 28kts). We have been on a port Gybe in more Easterly winds making some miles to the south today. The weather is more cloudy than it has been but all in all another good days sailing. Our Noon to Noon run was 171nm with approx 816nm to go. Life on board continues to run smoothly with the cooking and eating to a high standard. Just started of thinking about arriving which is dangerous with still about 4 to 5 days to go!!

We got a lesson and a reminder about how things can change quickly at sea yesterday early evening when an annoying squeak from the outhaul block on the end of the boom ended up with Phil having to take another dip in the Ocean. The squeak had developed during the day and we decided to sort it out before the night came. We furled in the Genoa and headed up to wind so that we could get to the end of the boom. So far so good. With the block lubricated using some Lithium grease,  we turned our attention to the propeller on the end of the line for the tow generator which had some twists in only to find that the line had wrapped itself around the rudder twice while we had been stopped. It would not come off so Phil ended up back in the water on the end of a line to free the rudder. That solved we were on our way. Fortunately the squeak had been cured…..

The weather was quite squally during the night with lot of reefing and un-reefing required. We also had contact with our first ship for ten days, a tanker on its way to Nigeria. It was comforting to know that they had seen our AIS signal from about 10 miles away.

It sounds like we are in for another dose of fresh winds tonight by the sound of it from the nav table. Ligther winds forecast for tomorrow so we hope to try our secret weapon - The Parasail.

Noon site getting better - within 2nm today