Blog Friday 23rd January 2010

Susan Ayu
Peter Costalas
Fri 22 Jan 2010 13:59

Thursday 21st January 2010

More sea and sun

The sails had not been touched all night and we kept going on the same track. It seems even hotter now and the sea temperature is up to 29.5°. Charlize, the heron, is still with us. As I’ve fed her for the last two days she seemed to hone in on me and when I clipped myself onto the safety line to go forward to feed her I got a peck to my fingers – no blood just a bit painful. We started fishing early but had no joy all day.

I won’t go on about the lovely blue sea and sunshine but I think it’s payback time for all the rain and grey we suffered in South Devon this summer. Bernie (who has lived in such climates) says you get fed up with the heat after about 6 months but I wouldn’t mind if we had the chance to try it out next summer in the UK!

We broke with the tradition of cereal and porridge this morning and had a breakfast of Chocolate Croissant and fresh brewed coffee. Long life chocolate croissants turned out to be surprisingly good and we can look forward to a repeat on a couple more mornings.

After breakfast Peter was on boat maintenance, Bernie reading, Andy fishing and finding the shade and me looking at the sea. We also tried Charlize on tinned tuna but sadly she wasn’t interested at all. She flicked a lot of it across the foredeck but didn’t eat any.

After a lunch of corned beef sandwiches with Branston pickle (yum), rustled up by Andy, we sat in the cockpit and finished the RNLI quiz. We ended up with 85% correct for the 100 questions and had had a lot of fun in the process.

Nature reports have been thin on the ground in the last few blogs because we haven’t seen much. There are flying fish – predominantly visible in the mornings and for the last few days we have had a tropic bird fly over late afternoon. It’s not the same bird but it circles the fishing lure before flying off in its quest for food. It’s a beautiful species with a long thin tail like a long white stiff ribbon flying behind it’s body. It has a big beak and an orange flash on its head. Considering how far we are from land it must spend much of its life at sea.

After dark we settled down to an aperitif of Padron Pimentos (the last supplies) and we found where we had hidden the Pringles crisps! As we had opened a tin of tuna earlier, dinner was spicy tuna fishcakes with baked beans followed by our two tins of rice pudding (made in Cornwall) and strawberry jam for those who like it.

We had good winds overnight up to 23 knots leading to one reef in the main sail (making the sail area smaller to allow the boat to sail more efficiently and controllably). We plan to turn to a more southerly route tomorrow to be in a better approach position for Antigua and also to miss an area of light winds which Peter picked up in today’s weather forecast.

Friday 23rd January 2010

It better be fish day

Another glorious morning – still got a hungry heron on board. The fishing line is out. After today if we don’t catch anything it’s tinned sardines or nothing!

It was also vegetable inspection day. The lemons and white onions are doing best. We are likely to run out of fresh fruit and veg before we get to Antigua but the tins beckon and we still have plenty of fruit juice. I have vitamin pills, cod liver oil tablets and bran should all else fail!! (have kept this quiet from the crew)