Bernie's Blog 23^rd May

Day 3 at sea and we are settling into ocean passage routine. With five crew we have three ‘day watches’ of 4 hours and five ‘night watches’ of 2 hrs; which gives everyone plenty of time for resting, reading, chatting or cooking. Speaking of which, last evening we had an excellent supper – chicken in honey and grain mustard sauce with rice, French beans and fresh carrots - cooked by Peter Stonestreet (known as P2 to differentiate him from our skipper Peter who is P1). P1’s wife Sue will be pleased …… as will be Christine!! Excellent.

Having left behind us 3 days ago the very wet and windy island of St Maarten, we are now exposed to the full blast of overhead tropical sun and some of us are still acclimatising to the unrelenting heat and humidity by day; while enjoying the warm temperature while on deck at night. At least it is not raining and the sea is calm. When at sea you can never have everything to your liking!  By the way, the sea temperature is 31c (88f). We may have ‘hands to bathe’ at some stage.

Not much to see at the moment; just the occasional bird and flying fish. And, speaking of fish, we have a fishing line out by day and still patiently await our first catch. When we run out of fresh meat in about 4 days we hope for the occasional fishing success.

The Welsh Cakes provide by a ‘supporter’ are going down well and a real boost for the night watchmen. Thanks Di.

And finally, just to go back to Antigua for a moment. Before we left Bernie was able to visit the Royal Naval Tot Club of Antigua and Barbuda (of which he is a member) on two evenings and to introduce Rod, Colin and Peter (P2) to this daily 1800 Tot ceremony.  Google: “RN Tot Club” for details. - http://www.linnetwoods.com/marinezine/1/naval_history/rntc_information.htm