Resupply at sea - RSA
Silver Bear
Ray Lawry
Sat 5 Dec 2009 12:27
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It took a while to find them, but the Atlantic
Ocean is a big place. We have been shadowing Starfire for three days now and a
pattern is emerging. On day one we managed to pass over a couple of semi-chilled
beers for each of them. On day two the throw line was caught (one handed by the
gifted cricketer and skipper of Silver Bear) and at Alan's request an ipod
was despatched together with some chocolate in exchange for some downloaded
films - no doubt these films will have a shaking camera and have the sound
of sweet wrappers in the background. Day three is showing the true motive when
Alan suggested we should swap two people from each boat!
We are making slow but steady progress with
approximately 1100 nm to go to St Lucia. Its good to have the company
of Alan and Tom who have all the cheek and banter one might expect from two
single young lads crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a 25 foot boat with a small
section of scaffold plank acting as a rudder. The radio traffic is lively, if
not always in accord with the protocols, but then we are hundreds of miles from
any other vessel.
Life onboard has settled into a pattern, we have
almost given up on cards as they keep flying about in the wind. The bread making
is a real hit, Ali's knitting is going well, the sextant results are becoming a
little more accurate (although the twilight star sights need a longer
twilight!), and I thought we had just caught our first fish, but sadly it
was a false alarm. We are sailing dead downwind in a very rolling sea so
it's pretty uncomfortable, even more so for Alan and Tom, but we are safely
moving in the right direction.
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