Lat: 26:45.5. N : Long: 59:33.0 W.

8^th June, 2014 – Noon Position, South-East of Bermuda, North Atlantic.

Dear All,

The wind behaved as predicted early this morning, so we have been motor-sailing all day, since 10 past 7.

It has now veered round to the South, giving us very little apparent breeze to work with and we can see from our weather maps (GRIB Files) that there is better breeze ahead of us, but it is moving off to the East and dissipating fairly quickly, leaving us with a potentially awkward light airs beat to windward on port tack on Wednesday, if we don't get it right, when the next High moves East off the US coast.

So we are trying to catch onto its tail and get a smart sail along into the Azores on the back of it. However, things do not look too good for that, as we are not quite going fast enough for it to be easy to achieve.Let's hope it slows down....

At least it is comfortable on board and not now quite as hot below decks as it was at first. Life on board is  easy-going for now and everybody is well rested.

Both Jason and Will have been busy every day, in the morning, at noon and again in the afternoons, taking their sextant sights and then spending hours trying to work out the results. Today Jason claimed a fix of one mile off the GPS logged position, so that definitely holds the yellow jersey for now!

Mind you, neither Nelius nor I have done anything to confirm nor check this feat, so we are relying on his integrity that he really be that good. It took him a long while to sort out an error, but what is important is that he knew he had one in there somewhere. It was clearly a moment of some pride when he found it and re-worked the numbers to get such a good fix.

It is comforting to know somebody on board can work these things out, should our electronics and GPS signals all fail and we really need to return to the old navigational skills! Will has also certainly not wasted his time in Antigua, awaiting our departure, and his newly-acquired skills of the dark arts of celestial navigation are starting to be tested too.

The sea is remarkably calm and we have been getting regular fly bys of three Long-Tailed Tropic Birds (probably out of Bermuda, where they nest) and they have been vainly attempting to land on our masthead, or the RIB cover, but to no avail. They really have no legs to speak of at all and are incredibly clumsy birds when coming into land at the best of times. So a moving yacht, especially one with a Christmas tree of spiky aerials at the top of its mast, is not the best target to aim for, let alone a RIB in davits so close to four pairs of watching eyes!

Alan calls them the parakeets of the sea, as they not only look like white ones, but pairs also keep up an incessant chatter making it quite easy to know when they are paying another visit.

After a lot of binocular and close-up spotting work Alan decided they must be two of the White-Tailed and one of the Red-Billed types. Other than that we have had two big ships pass close by this afternoon and we sailed past a smaller sailing yacht earlier, called "Isola", the same one whom we had spoken with the previous evening. She crossed ahead of us, visible only on AIS, heading more Easterly than us, and almost certainly motoring, too.

Large patches of sponge-shaped golden-orange Sargasso weed are floating by, with just the occasional plastic fishing float, or bottle, and one lump of pumice stone, but other than that the sea is remarkably quiet, only punctuated by the odd Atlantic Shearwater paddling away from our oncoming bows.

All in all, an uneventful day, thank Heavens!