Tuesday 26 July:  Today's Blog by David. 40:40.1N 10: 51.8W

Well- progress has not been that wonderful since the wind turned north. You'd have thought that an oxymoron but if you are travelling south your apparent wind speed drops  and it is hard to keep the speed up without a lot of sail up. Also the mainsail blankets the headsail so one or other is for ever flogging (and flogging means chafe).We tried the kite for a while yesterday but eventually gave into the Arabs.

Lamb Tagine for dinner, courtesy of Bob (and Norma!).

So a grotty night, slopping all over the place going nowhere fast until it dawned upon me (Doooh!) that we were sailing in trade winds and that called for a trade wind rig. By then it was 03.00 and I divined that an "All Hands on DecK" call would not be met with  welcoming smiles, especially given that I estimated it would take us an hour to work through the rig (for the first time).  So we set the rig this morning and now are back on track at about 8kts on average. Not a space rocket but better than before.

Bob has just reported that the forwards heads do not flush away - deepest joy!