The good news is that Richie is back to his old self – just a bad day and completely to be expected out here as we have almost spent 50 days at sea.  There were no hard feelings between us and to be honest I can’t really remember what was said in the dark hours of the morning. We had a good chat through everything and we talked about how each of us was dealing with being out here. Personally, I love the experience and have done since day one – it has been all that I expected it to be and more. I have had negative thoughts and constantly been missing loved ones and creature comforts of home but I try and quickly  dispel these thoughts, think positive thoughts, stay focused and picture finishing – that more than anything drives me on. It appears that Rich tends to bottle things up and let the little things eat away at him which will get you down. He’s one tough cookie and would never quit –  you aren’t ranked 4th in the World for Triple Iron Man if you’re not mentally and physically awesome.  

We’ve now less than 1000 miles to run and yesterday have broken through 45 degrees West longitude. We’re now locked onto 50 degrees West and if we can average 50 miles a day we should reach it by Tuesday.

Red Arrow gets sent lots of jokes by email and text. Kate Rooke is probably the most prolific texter and they are the worst Christmas cracker jokes we’ve ever heard. The law of averages dictates that we should receive one funny one by the time we arrive in Antigua. The below email joke from Laura was a good one and worth sharing………….

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A guy goes to the supermarket and notices an attractive woman waving at him. She says hello. He's rather taken aback because he can't place where he knows her from.
 
So he says, 'Do you know me?'
 
To which she replies, 'I think you're the father of one of my kids.'
 
Now his mind travels back to the only time he has ever been unfaithful to his wife and says, 'Are you the stripper from the bachelor party that I made love to on the pool table with all my buddies watching while your partner whipped my butt with wet celery???'
 
She looks into his eyes and says calmly, 'No, I'm your son's teacher.'
 
Moral of the message: Always understand what a person is saying before responding.

After reading this joke it made me think of a Stag do story of my own…………Last year a group of us went to Brighton for Chris Evans’ stag for a long weekend. During the Saturday day we took a walk up Brighton pier. Unbeknown to Chris (who was dressed as a sheep) he was going to be launched off the end until someone noticed a henna tattooist. Excellent – the stag is having a tattoo. Reluctantly sheep boy sat down and we told him he’d be getting a very small heart or something. He wanted it on his arm but rather cleverly someone suggested putting it on his shoulder blade which would stop him from seeing it being drawn. When Chris was passed the mirror to see the end result he was horrified to see a huge love heart with his ex girlfriends name written through the middle of it – BRILLIANT! The wedding was a couple of weeks away and it would take about 3 weeks to rub off. To make it worse for Chris a photo was instantly sent to his fiancée! I tried to stop them…………..

Moral of the message: Don’t go to Brighton on your stag do.

Have a good weekend everyone.

The row must go on – Antigua here we come.

Barnesy

Matt Hort -                    I know Rich has replied t o you but your email to us was a masterpiece. Thank you.