13:55.982 S  169:11.951 W

30/7/08 17:00

It’s clouded over and the wind has gone more easterly so the pole is still out.

Steve won the Scrabble match (thank God) and press ganged Russell into cooking tonight’s dinner, a chicken paprika with saffron rice recipe which is another boat standard. Russell has completed the first part under the watchful eyes of both Steve and Demetra who is curious about the recipe.

The Seas have built quite a bit and every once in a while we are slued around by a quartering sea..  Sometimes the waves give us a lift and we just touched 12.1 knots surfing down one of them.

23:45

Dinner was a success. There was no sunset tonight and we get occasional spitting showers.

We are still hurtling along.  It will be interesting to see what the next noon to noon distance covered will be. The motion of the boat is still pretty lively, but we’re all so tired we may sleep anyway.

31/7/08 08:00

Dawn was a soft water colour smudge affair.  Very understated. I found Demetra sleeping at the chart table when I got up. It was another difficult night for sleeping but we are making very good progress. I’m continually surprised at how well we are doing with the Staysail pretending to be a Mainsail. The sea is down a bit but we are still lurching about…every once is a while a big one comes through….

12:00

Still rocking and rolling along. Noon to noon was 212 miles and there are 90 miles left so we will be in well before midnight.