17:04.8N 61:17.4W

Sinan
Tim Kelsey
Mon 7 Dec 2009 00:05

DAY 21 (Friday 4th Dec)

 

 

Into the final strait and, having run like an elderly geography teacher in the egg and spoon race earlier in the voyage, Sinan today decided it was the nautical equivalent of Usain Bolt.

 

Colin and I chose to keep some of the speedometer readings from the skipper at one stage. When it read 12.4 knots (basically, we were surfing), we decided to keep the readings to ourselves. At this rate we'd only be four days late! We might even beat the rowers and the bloke doing the crossing in an empty Shepherd Neame barrel.

 

The heat today was brutal. By 8am we were gasping for breath. At one stage, Captain K stripped to his long johns before thinking better of it and rebuttoning his braided jacket.

On the literary front, Kitkat finished The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and concluded: 'Basically, I think she might have been a bit of fascist.' He'd pieced this together from the following facts:

 

* She supported Franco's nationalists in the Spanish Civil War

* She visited Germany in 1938 (despite the fact Pink Floyd weren't playing)

* She had a poster of Freddie Starr in his Hitler outfit pinned to her bedroom wall.

 

While Sinan was making great numbers, Colin and I decided to chill for most of the day. We'd already worked out that arriving in Antigua before the start of the Six Nations rugby would require airline tickets. Frantically changing sails now would just increase chafing (of man and rope).

 

The skipper, meanwhile, was putting the finishing touches to the final passage plan into Jolly Harbour, Antigua. This required forensic attention as the southern end of the island is skirted with keel crunching reefs and shoals. 'That'll do it!' he bellowed from down below, pointing to a large pin while rubbing out a pencil drawing of a donkey's backside from the chart.

 

Just as we were about to question him a little more closely about a strategy which appeared to hinge on 'hanging a big right after a bit or maybe slightly longer than that', the fishing rod twanged into life.

Making the same clicking sound as the grooved bamboo stick given to the talentless kid in the school orchestra, the skipper's pole (stop it, please) was screaming 'fish'.

'We need to land this one boys otherwise it's army rations for tea!' yelled Captain K, gripping the rod and then babbling quotes from the opening credits of the Six Million Dollar Man ('she's breaking up; I can't hold her!')

 

Very much more than barely alive, the beast struggled more than Kitkat with chemistry homework. We prayed for a medium sized Dourade. This was a mistake as we landed a supremely ugly barracuda (unconfirmed).  'I think I'll chance it with the army rations,' said Kitkat, emerging from a two hour 'confined to bunk' punishment for reading out passages from Tess of the D'Urbervilles.  (In the event, the fish - beheaded and gutted - ended up in the drink not the cooker. We forgot to switch the fridge on that night).

 

Twilight brought out the Scrabble. The first two efforts spelt out 'wounded' and 'death' on the board.  'Nobody say a bloody word!' hissed Captain K, by now a committed fatalist (for extremely good and well documented reasons). 'And nobody use that toilet, neither,' I chipped in, with a nod to Michael Caine which didn't play well with the man who refuses to answer to the name of Pugwash.

 

Not a lot of people know that.

 

RWD

www.justgiving.com/atlanticoceansail