Bernie’s Blog - Day 5 – Thursday 28^th July 2011

Leg Five: Azores to Dartmouth

We had motored for 30 hours but this morning at 0400 there was enough breeze from the southwest to allow us to sail and for the din of the engine noise to cease. Peace!

You do get used to the background engine noise after awhile to the extent that when the noise stops and all is quiet it can wake you up. A quiet warship is an unsettling sound.

We are getting back into the routine of the long ocean passage. Watches, dhobeying (that’s clothes washing), reading, chatting, sunbathing and eating …and boy, do we eat. With Christine back onboard for nthis leg are eating well. Last evening it was fresh beef medallions in a lovely pepper, onion and garlic sauce, and with rice. To follow we had either Lemon Drizzle or Boiled Fruit cake on deck with our evening coffee as the sun went down.

We are keeping GMT time at the moment which is one hour behind UK. In a few days we will put our clocks forward to UK time (ie British Summer Time). We like to keep sunrise and sunset at times that are sociable to our routine. We rule this little world of ours so we can do what we want when we want provided the skipper agrees!

For those who like to know these things; we have a southerly 10 knot wind from the starboard quarter, and we are now sailing with the asymmetric spinnaker flying from the bowsprit and making about 5 knots. The sea has small wavelets over a gentle Atlantic swell and the sun is shining. The washing is on the guardrail. All is well.

We topped up the fuel from three of the plastic cans this morning and we are making water by the osmosis plant we have onboard. Peter (our Skipper) calculates that if we had to motor all the way (we will not!) then we could make fish n’ chips in Falmouth with the fuel we have onboard

Andy was on watch at 0900 this morning when he spotted whale close to us on the port side. It blew then made a large intake of air and disappeared from view. Had it been spotted earlier it would be normal to start the engine in this situation to ensure the whale stayed away from us. They can be larger than our 43 foot yacht and weigh several tons and could do much damage if they hit us.

So that is it for today from the good ship ‘Susan Ayu’. We are thinking of you.