Sunday Nov 13th On passage to Barbados 14 04.08N 46 14.42W

Today’s blog by Richard

Well, we are continuing to make great progress – now less than 800 nautical miles to go and spirits are high.

After an undisturbed night, I was lucky enough to be on the 5am to 8am watch this morning and was treated to this unbelievable sunrise:

That really set me up for the day – and it has proved to be a day of successes and records broken.

We have been running the spinnaker (the frog sail) continuously for over 24 hours – by his own admission, the first time David has kept it up all night. Here is another picture of it in full splendour:

The next success was also David’s as he baked an edible loaf for the first time this voyage. It was quite perfect and we ate it still warm with a very interesting, if unusual, soup. We mixed a carton of gazpacho with the hand-blended remains of last night’s Spanish sausage casserole and it was very tasty indeed. We are considering commercialising the recipe when we return. For reasons you can imagine, we felt that a photo of the soup might put you off your dinners  but here is the ultimate maritime loaf:

This one, we concluded, was definitely heart, not buttock, shaped.

The other record broken today was that we covered 200 miles in a 24 hour period for first time. This was worthy of celebration and we each had a Magnum ice cream.

You probably think we are very smug with our pictures of sunrises etc but we do remember what the weather is like back home and would like you to know that we do get some rain in these parts, too. This area of rain got to within 5 miles of us:

Keith has assumed the Dr Doom mantle today as he has been itching to get a photograph of rain.

Finally, a bit of unrecorded news from Saturday. Our stock of milk is contained in Tetrapak cartons, which, once opened, are not the best means of containment, particularly in a boat which is pitching around. So, we searched for an alternative. Naturally, Serendipity is full of empty gin bottles and one of these  proved to be the perfect answer. Here is Bob with his Gordon’s milk and cereal for breakfast, demonstrating what the sea does to us all, eventually:

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