13:08.49N 48:04.47W

Heading West Fifth Blog, back to me I’m afraid

5^th December 2014

Fifth edition of the going west blogs and it is back to me as Tony has declined the offer of going into print. What can I say nothing much has happened. We are into a ground hog day routine and the miles keep ticking away. Tony has had several hits on his fishing line all bar one getting away. This was a new species on us and the best guess so far is that it is a horse eye jack. It was not big enough to feed five so it has been filleted and put in the freezer while it awaits a partner or two before becoming a meal for the crew. Everyone is getting a bit adventurous with the cooking and meal times are a real treat, after every meal Steve states with absolute conviction that, “that was definitely better than the shit we had last night” so we must be getting better. Likewise the bread making after a bit of a ropey start is producing fresh loaves every other day with Steve and I being the nominated bakers. I don’t know what it is but there is definitely something immensely satisfying about making bread.

Every night before the sun goes down we have a scheduled100% deck check. This involves the next person on shift going around the decks and checking every nut, bolt, washer and fitting for tightness, wear, chafe or damage. This process is again repeated at 8 in the morning and I have found it works really well at finding issues before they become problems. Having said that we still accumulate a string of niggly little faults that need fixing. The main kicking strap popped a couple of rivets yesterday and of course my rivet gun broke so it is now supported by a ratchet strap until we get into port. This morning when we went to shake out a reef in the main I noticed that the car for the second batten had come apart in the night. We took the car apart and found the bronze nut inside had stripped its thread. No spare nut as it is a bit of a strange one so the whole unit is now sitting on the saloon table after being epoxy glued in place. It will go back up this afternoon. Fingers crossed nothing has come up yet that is beyond either our skill set or spare parts bucket contents and so we have been able to either fix it properly or at least make a decent running repair.

On a slightly more worrying note Norma has informed us that we are down to our last 10 chocolate bars. I have placed them in the safe and I am watching the crew closely for signs of mutiny. On that note we have a snack box in the galley which Norma restocks daily with nibbly things for the on-watch crew to pick at. We do that to stop hungry sailors harvesting the food lockers in the middle of the night and completely mucking up the meal plans. It seems to have worked pretty well so far and nobody is in any danger of contracting scurvy that I can tell.

A bit of a rambley one this time but we are all well and counting the miles down to Barbados…666 miles to go (the number of the beast).

As a side note if anyone has any particular questions about doing this sort of trip please ask via the email below and I will do a blog in a week or two and answer them all together. Who knows it may be of use or interest to the wider audience, I bet if you have a question someone else will be interested in the answer so no such thing as a stupid question and I wont print any names. Also on that note if anyone knows of a particularly good place to go or thing to see in Barbados or Grenada please drop me a line on the email below. As always no attachments please as it will kill the satellite link and cost me a fortune.

That’s it from me, I am on Mummy watch this morning the bread is baking and smelling good, Steve is fishing, Norma and Tony are sleeping after their night watch and Peter has our lives in his hands as he is on watch.

 Here are the stats so far:

Day 0.5 17.5 hours 84 miles           Average 4.8 Knots

Day 1 24 hours       173 miles          Average 7.2 Knots

Day 2 24 hours       187 miles          Average 7.8 Knots

Day 3 24 hours       168 miles          Average 7.0 Knots

Day 4 24 hours       159 miles          Average 6.6 Knots

Day 5 24 hours       149 miles          Average 6.2 Knots

Day 6 24 hours       147 miles          Average 6.1 Knots

Day 7 24 hours       156 miles          Average 6.5 Knots

Day 8 24 hours        97 miles           Average 4.0 Knots

Day 9 24 hours       151 miles          Average 6.3 Knots

Time taken to half way point: 7 days 1 hour and 30 minutes

And some extra ones:

Generator hours                  60

Water maker Hours            28 1,400 litres of fresh water produced at 50 litres ph

Washing machine loads       3

Crew showers                    4 x 5 crew = 20 showers                    

Mummy watches each        3

Email:

Spectra {CHANGE TO AT} mailasail {DOT} com

No attachment or pics please as this is a very low bandwidth satellite link and costs a small fortune per minute for downloads and they block up my weather reports.

If you want to send normal email pics attachment etc.

Paul {DOT} russell732 {CHANGE TO AT} hotmail {DOT} co {DOT} uk and I will pick it up when I am on WiFi