Day T minus 3 It’s all about efficient stowage
Purple Mist
Skipper: Kate Cope
Fri 6 Jan 2023 00:34
I had an early start today to crack on with sorting and stowing the food and water. How to squeeze 136litres into a 32ft boat. Every compartment is filled to the brim and we’ve logged in the log book the location and quantities. We’ve tried to prioritise to what we need en route and what is for the Caribbean and emergencies . Inevitably some kit is pretty inaccessible under the rear bunks so we’ve reserved that for the least likely to be needed.
We have no fridge but our Airbnb host has offered to freeze some of our long life milk to make ice blocks so at least for the first 2-3 days we can have some fresh food like cheese. After that lunch will be various grains and couscous, tinned fish and tinned vegetables…sort of long life salad.
Late morning we headed off to get our passports stamped out ( one of the horrors of Brexit) then we tried and failed to find more Camping Gaz. After a fruitless search we concluded 1.5 bottles was enough anyway. Then it was a trip to the supermarket for some last minute goodies … I’m thinking we are a bit over catered but I’m sure it will all get eaten in the Caribbean if not on the race.
Later in the afternoon the wind dropped enough that we could hoist the main on the dock and check out all the reefing. We have set up reefing to the cockpit for reef 1 so we needed to check that was all working. We’ve also tied in Reef 3 just in case of super heavy winds.
Tonight was another social , this time local wine and local cheese . Another chance to chat with the teams of 20 aboard other boats . They think we have it tough with just 2 aboard , I think my worst nightmare is a boat of 20 people.
Richard from Jangada has joined us bringing with him a special cake from Grace - it’s a date cake that apparently is favoured by Pip Hare on long races so it has good pedigree and is much appreciated.
Emily is still doing a great job busy on social media, tagging away and increasing my instragram following every day . Tonight the RORC media referred to her as our PR director so that’s something new for her CV.