Saturday 17th  March:  The South Pacific Ocean 08 20.71 128 04.09W     

Today’s Blog by Bob  (Time Zone UTC-8 hours)

Greetings dear readers and I hope that you are having a wonderful weekend. Weekends don’t really exist here.  Yesterday, being Friday night,  we had thought of popping out for a meal to celebrate Richard’s birthday in style but in the end settled for a quiet night in with a stir-fry and a bottle of wine. Mind you Richard’s special day did not go unheralded. Having discovered that none of us actually knew how to bake a cake let alone ice one we came up with the more appropriate solution of Birthday Icecreams.

Note that we have kept with tradition as Richard shows the obligatory candle. Top marks to whoever put candles on the provisioning list. We did try to insert the correct number of candles to denote his years but ended up with something that resembled the Olympic torch.   Richard also had cards too.

As there was no-one within earshot we also sang “Happy Birthday” Gosh we know how to have fun.

Of course aside from all this hilarity and frivolity the serious business of sailing has to continue. With the wind now down to about 8kts this has not proved to be too demanding though keeping Serendipity pointing in the way that we want to go is a bit more of a challenge. The wind varies  about 30 degrees either side of our stern and in these light airs the “Frog” is the obvious choice of sail. However the risk of a squall is always present, especially at night.  At this point we need all hands to pull down the Frog and deploy the “Barn Doors” as our twin headsails have become known.  We are getting well practiced at this to the point where we can do it in our sleep. (Sleep now defined as the short period between sail changes).  Of course we could simply just pull the lot in and switch on the engine but with over 600 miles to go to Hive Oa there doesn’t seem much point in burning our expensive Galapagos diesel.

Last night was a truly beautiful Pacific night, the moon rose late so the early watches enjoyed a display of stars not seen for a few days and the perfection was only broken by the squall that rushed by at about 1am leaving us wet and windless.

Today has been a quiet day with little bits of maintenance going on. We ate our last Pineapple for breakfast, in fact we are just about out of fruit though the veg department is faring better.  We watch as little clouds promise us a cooling shower and then disappear. Oh well , back to the crossword.  It’s a tough life.

Have a wonderful weekend dear readers and I leave you with the fervent hope that Tottenham can break their run of losses.