Christmas Greetings

Panatlantic
Tue 25 Dec 2007 19:14
Merry Christmas to you all!
I hope this finds you all snug and warm, next to a warm fire or radiator, fill to bursting point with turkey and trimmings and supping on some soul-warming beverage, all the while basking in the love of your friends and relatives. That's how i tend to spend my Christmas evenings!
On Christmas Day last year i climbed to the snow-smattered summit of Skafell Pike, England's loftiest hillock, from which i called James to talk about how different things would be 'this time next year.' James was drunk near to blindness and could barely communicate with me, as i gazed out over the river of cloud flowing between the Lake District's highest peaks, but agreed that yes, things would be mighty different!
 
And how they are!
 
This morning saw us in our normal routine, coming off the night shifts after making steady ground towards our waypoint. I rowed the dawn shift, watching the sun rise into a near cloudless sky. Whisps of Cirrus in the southern sky foretold of a change in weather, a body of low pressure moving northwards towards us that will bring with it fine tail-winds some time in the next 24 hours (as low pressure systems rotate anticlockwise in the Northern Hemisphere), an auspicious start to any day! Upon reflection however, these systems also tend to bring with them a great deal of precipitation, so perhaps not such an auspicious start afterall!
 
We must have accidentally kept our vent open during the night, for we had a few surprises for us once the sleep had worked its way out of our eyes: Santa Claus had been to visit! He climbed down our little air vent and brought with him some wonderful gifts, not least of which a solar shower and rubber ring from my 12 days of Christmas wish list! I suspect that Rachel might have suggested to Santa that this would be most appreciated, and indeed they are, i am now cleaner than i have been in some months having just had a lovely shower on deck!
 
We both received wonderful letters and gifts from our families back home in England, and decided to tuck in to some breakfast. Upon arriving in La Gomera we discovered that we were missing several boxes of food that had been mislaid by the couriers/nabbed by the Spanish customs, which means that we had to supplement our (just about edible) Expedition Foods main meals with (dog food tasts better) Raven Organic Dehydrated Meals, containing no artificial flavourings, hence the flavour. Each morning we battle to extract 2 food bags from our hatches and await the Russian Roulette of what is inside: Curry gets a cheer, everything else is greeted with disappointment apart from the Raven food that induces tears. This morning i randomly selected 2 bags of food and eagerly opened them up, full of the joys of the day. Out came the most sorry sight to greet any weary traveller, 8 bags of Raven food: "Not today", said James, throwing them over board, and he went and found something more edible!
 
We've been receiving emails telling us that some of the other rowers have been hallucinating! I can safely report that we have suffered so such problems, me and Big Bob keep a good look out for any strange happenings every day and night and we haven't seen anything out of the ordinary, have we Big Bob?
Big Bob says "No my lordship."
The meteors did look quite surreal, one can see how Cletus and Bobby-Joe out in Idaho might mistake such astronomical phenomenae for UFOs, all that remains is to answer how and why all of them end up being probed?
I was highly surprised to see an elephant riding towards me on a unicycle last night too, but Big Bob told me that it was just Jamima Puddle-Trunk on the look out for peanuts, we didn't have any on board so she trumpeted at us and pedalled away playing her occarina to look for some up North. "She's very dextrous for an elephant", i thought, for she didn't miss a note on her occarina.
 
The rowing is often very challenging, it might come as a surprise to most of you that the Atlantic is a great deal more wavy than i had imagined, but at times it can be sublime. The nights particularly lend themselves to wonder, especially now that we are accustomed to the shifts and don't suffer so much from fatigue. We both tend to listen to music but just every now and then i leave the MP3 player off in order to row placidly amid the noise and the haste of the waves that crash around me, and remember what peace there may be in silence, for it is rare that i will find such moments again in my life to enjoy such wonderful isolation from everything else in the world, and i am careful to savour the experience while i can.
 
Right then good people, i shall leave you there with an offering of my warmest regards for the festive season, enjoy the rest of your evening,
 
Love Niall and Big Bob