Becalmed!

 

When I got into the cockpit after a little morning nap the wind had died completely so I voiced the idea of a swim round the boat. Liz wasn’t keen on it on the basis that there could be things with teeth lurking just under the surface. A few fish I thought. Michael went to the stern to check on the boarding ladder and saw a two metre shark following in our wake. The skipper did a quick about face and made an executive decision to postpone the Rhapsode swimming olympics! Good call I think.

 

We’ve been bugged! Last night when we were all sitting in the cockpit having dinner a small flying insect arrived. Rather like a skinny wasp and it took an inordinate amount of interest in Michaela and her bowl of food. She eventually brushed it off when it was then crushed under the heel of a salt-hardened foot. Interesting because we’re about 150 miles off the coast and it would have had to have flown that distance against the wind. This morning Liz found a small beetle pottering about my tea tin. Extra protein I suppose if it made it it into the pot. We also have a little colony of spiders. Small ones that have remained hidden up until now. Our supplies of fresh fruit and veg are dwindling so perhaps hunger is driving them out. As I write I have counted the remaining items in the fresh produce hammock swinging above my head – seven oranges, two apples and a tired looking cabbage – and still ten days to go to French Guiana. More if we stay becalmed!  I wonder whether the crew will mutiny if I put them on fruit rationing as well as water rationing?

 

Oh, we are all Northerners now. We crossed the equator at about twenty to ten last night and are now 21 miles north of it. Odd that our pterodactyls had come to roost up until a few minutes before crossing the line. They flew off before we got there and have not been seen since.

 

Becalmed, sharks, bugs, fruit, veg and water rationing, pterodactyls abandoning ship – I leave you to make of it what you will.

 

P, L, M & M