Saturday 23^rd January 2010

Curry night again – where does the time go?

Another hot and sunny day. We still have a heron on board. I fed her on the foredeck where it took her about 30 seconds to despatch the first of the tuna packets. After that she seemed very tired and we were worried she might be dying as her behaviour was very different to normal (as much as we know what normal behaviour for a reef heron on a sailing yacht is!). She spent a lot of time on her ‘haunches’, with her knees bent under her, and with her eyes half shut.  Perhaps she was just full of tuna although to us it looked a very small portion.  She seems to like company and prefers to sit on the side of the boat above the cockpit where we are usually gathered.

It was a good days sailing with speeds well over the aimed for average of 5 knots but the swell made doing anything below difficult.

Bernie however managed to rustle up the most delicious bacon sandwiches for lunch.  We have resisted opening the bacon until now.  I was on watch and the smell of frying bacon wafted up the companionway and made my tummy rumble.  What is it about bacon that seems to have this universal effect (unless of course you are a vegetarian)? We had apples for dessert- they are beginning to show their age and have apple wrinkles but they were sweet and we persuaded ourselves that eating them neutralised the bad calories and fat which were in the sandwiches.

After lunch we had another two pages worth of quiz questions to aid digestion.  Do you know, for example, when the wheel was invented? The options were 5500BC, 4500 BC, 3500 BC (answer at the bottom of the blog).

We then settled down to watches, snoozing and reading.  Andy has pinched my book on Infinity so I have been forced to resort to one of my other books.  I’m reading Rose Tremain’s Music and Silence which I have been looking forward to having time to read for ages.  I like her writing style and plots.  This is one of her historical novels set in Denmark in the 17^th Century.

When the heat of the day subsided and there was more shade in the cockpit Andy Bernie and I gathered for afternoon tea – we opened the last packet of digestive biscuits and started to fantasise about what we would eat when back on dry land.  Andy and Bernie are off to the pub for a couple of pints of Jail Ale, followed by stem ginger ice cream and then a rich fruit cake with a slice of cheddar cheese.  As we have none of these on board we made do with the biscuits, a type I’d never eat at home but which tasted really good with the tea. The skipper was catching up on his sleep.

Saturday night is curry night on Susan Ayu so we had Chicken Madras and a Black Eye Bean side curry.  It was supposed to be chick peas but Bernie was asleep and the chick peas are under his bunk and it seemed unkind to wake him up.  The alternative tasted good so all was well.  I had a go at making mini naan bread.  They were OK but not as successful as I had hoped.  All the curry went but two breads went to the fishes which was probably the best thing to do with them.

Charlize the heron had her second feed and decided to roost in the hole at deck level at the stern (back), underneath the bathing platform,  where we keep the bucket.  We think this is a good wheeze as we will be able to clean the area easier and it’s a good safe place for her to be overnight.  It was however a lovely moonlit night (about half the moon is now illuminated) and she came out to roost on the back port quarter.  She’s got swaying in time with the swells off to a T, even asleep.  My watch was 21.00-23.00.  Andy sat with me for half of the time and we enjoyed chatting about what we are going to do when we get to Antigua and when we get home and taking in the warm wafts of air coming from the sea – he reckoned it smelled salty – I think it was just warm air.   The log (cumulative mileage)  tripped over to 2000 miles at 22.00 and Peter took over the watch at 23.00.  All’s well with the world.

Answer to the question of when the wheel was invented is 3500 BC