27:40.8N 61:41.2W

Day 4

Oh God! Here we are slatting around in the Sargasso Sea, going at a snail’s pace and in the wrong direction and the commissariat is in meltdown. All the unrefrigerated fruit has decided to move from unripe to going rotten without passing through the intervening usable stage. We now have 18 bananas, two large papayas, 3 mangos and assorted peaches and nectarines that need eating NOW! So – large fruit salad for breakfast, smoothies to drink now and to freeze for later, and situation sort of under control, although duvet pressed into service again. I am force feeding the crew bananas, but it may not be enough. Fernande has gallantly offered to eat banana and peanut butter sandwiches – I put this down to a childhood spent in America. This would be ok, except that the American bread which normally lasts for weeks has all gone mouldy as well. Oh, and don’t try vacuum packing citrus fruit. We should have cut our losses when the vacuum bags started inflating with the gases the fruit were giving off – they are now exuding a kind of oily liquid which smells absolutely foul and they are unusable. Luckily we only tried vacuum packing a few as an experiment and the rest are ok, thank goodness.

Our troubles started at about noon yesterday when the wind went completely and then filled in from the opposite direction. So then we were close reaching on port tack, in the pouring rain. At 6.00 in the evening the wind died completely again and we gave up and put the motor on. At about 10.00p.m. the wind filled in from the North East and we cut the engine, but overnight sailing was very taxing, with what wind there was swinging around all the time, and gradually forcing us off our track.

Not much to report in the way of bird life or cetacean activity, apart from a few shearwaters skimming the waves and early this morning a visit from another lone tropic bird. We have however found two suicidal flying fish on deck and Fernande has spotted jellyfish floating around in the sea, which startlingly seems to be measuring 27°C.