Going along well

Saxon Blue's Blog
Harvey Jones and Andrea Stokes
Sun 29 Aug 2010 17:54
61:58.845N 61:25.656W Sunday afternoon

I feel much better today. Andrea and I both had a really good night's sleep and even getting up at 0400 wasn't too bad. The visibility was good so our watch was much easier than when we're in fog. We saw a fishing boat off to Port so it's reassuring that we're not the only vessel out here. This big open ocean does make me feel very small, though. Out here, bobbing around in a plastic cockleshell.

I was pretty groggy yesterday - not actually sick but certainly feeling the effects of the motion. Apparently, I was very quiet so I'm sure everyone was enjoying that. I also couldn't eat much so I'm trying to make up for that today and our Pringle mountain has already been reduced somewhat.

The ocean has changed since yesterday. It's now over 9 degrees C rather than 6 yesterday which is an incredible change in only 200 miles. That's got to be related more to currents than to latitude but it feels very different. We're not wearing half the clothes that we were and I spent an hour on watch without a hat on which is the first time since Southampton, I think. For the moment there isn't the amount of fog we've got used to, either. The birds have changed, too. There were constant Little Auks diving to get out of our way. They've all gone now and we're being accompanied by a flock of Fulmars wheeling and soaring without evident effort or, indeed, reward.

We're motoring at the moment but we're expecting the wind to pick up tonight to about 30 knots from behind us so we should get some excellent sailing in. Apart from that, it's just fiddling around onboard. Andrea and Kali tried on one of emergency immersion suits and, it's fair to say, their bums really did look big in it. Kali is planning the next section of our journey down the US coast and sorting out which places we want to visit.

We've just turned the engine off and we're sailing again with full main and genoa. Lovely.

Harvey

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com