Getting warmer

Neroli
Charles Tongue
Tue 25 Nov 2008 16:28
25:25.70N 18:22.00W
Getting warmer............
Progress has slowed since the start of the ARC on Sunday but at the moment we are on a course of 230 at a speed of 4kn with our spinnaker up. We covered 137 nautical miles (nm) in our first 24 hours but only 102 nm in the 24hr to 1200 GMT today. As we were taking our spinnaker down yesterday evening, just before nightfall, a Bowman 48 ,Adastra of Yar' (Bob Tabor, RYS) pased close across our stern which gave us encouragement. The wind went very light in the early hours of the morning and we heard on the SSB radio that many yachts have been motoring. At night we could see the lights of about eight yachts, a myriad of stars and, in the early hours of the morning, the tiny slither of a moon rose from the sea.  Today has been sunny and it is definately getting warmer although we can now only see one other yacht.
The positions as at midday yesterday, reported this morning from the ARC office on the Isle of Wight, put us in a very encouraging position ahead of many larger yachts and with 2,582 miles to go.
Life on board is settling into a routine after the excitement of the start. We work a rolling watch system with four hours on in the day and three at night. Each watch overlaps for one hour at the beginning and one hour at the end with the watchkeeper before and after. It sounds confusing but works well and means that each watchkeeper only does one hour alone at night and two in the day. We are laden down with food and are eating like tigers! Charlie and Graham are preparing dinner tonight and it will be steak, mashed potatoes and ratatouille. The temperature is very pleasant and we are wearing T shirts and shorts with a light fleece at night. At the moment all our 'systems' are working well. The SSB radio has been used succesfully to make contact and receive info from other boats and we are sending these daily diary entries via the sat phone. Because we have frozen a fair amount of food we are consuming a lot of electricity and have to charge our batteries early and late. Before we left the UK we agreed that each of us would bring three treats for the other members of the crew and Henry gave us our first treat today. Charlie has an Airfix model of HMS Victory to paint and assemble; Lou and Graham have fighter aircraft! The end results are to be judged by a panel of three experts - Granny Elsie, Francoise and little Charlie. More excitement today as we received our first emails from home and Graham opened a lovely picture drawn by Minty! 
The mental health of Henry, one of our crew members, is causing some concern. He has been running courses for the rest of the crew on Rap, Techno, House and heavy metal which are apparantly types of 'music' and has now started a course on guilt management which concerned our chief medical officer. More worrying he has just announced that he thinks he will go for a walk this afternoon. When Lou asked what sort of a walk he answered 'a coastal walk'.
 
1600 25.11.08