Ticketeeboo - Lovely day if we had enough wind to sail 16:34 N 044:47 W

Lovely day if we had enough wind to sail 16:34 N 044:47 W

Ticketeeboo

Sue & Alan

Tue 14 Jan 2014 14:05

As I prepared to hand-over to Ray for his 12-4 watch we were beginning to struggle to make way under sail so the end of our lovely session close-reaching was at an end (for time being). I put-off the inevitable until half hour or so before our watch change-over because the sensible option had to be donkusonus. No change since! With a 3 - 4m swell from the N, which is on our beam (lovely) and less than 5kn wind no changes envisaged. Ray's just brought me his skiddies, shirts & pants (in a bundle so I don't need to touch anything still warm!) and a wash is on for next hour - making water too! It was really lovely to be able to use our mainsl again, even for just a few hours with Ticketeeboo tip-toeing across the waves, cutting through the swell almost effortlessly. Neither of us thought we might get a bit of close-reaching on a trade-wind passage towards Caribbean?
Yesterday, Ray had been complaining he had a headache, caused by my enthusiastic addition of chilli-pepper, day before. I didn't get a headache and the after-burn was really good. Who needs mints when chilli-peppers are on board? Headache has all gone now and I Ray says last night sleep was improvement on no sleep at all!
Squiddy's lost most of its undercarriage and if nothing gets fangled on the hook today I will be thinking of making another change - needs must and our undercarriage-deficient squiddy will need an inventive body job before re-submission as star attraction. To celebrate we're goina' have tuna & spuds tonight and it'll be simply-tasty.
Binman's just been! We've now bib-bag liner No.2 in RIB-undercover. All perishable food waste is fish-food and anything else is going to Barbados with us. It's working out as one bag a week (well nearly).
We missed a number of squalls last night and at daybreak I could see a large one about 10 or 15M astern. I'm glad we were just ahead of that'un. We have sunshine. 28ºC air temperature and 26ºC sea temperature. If we wern't sc ared of retribution (sharks, mahi-mahi & tuna fish might all be best of palls) we might wanna stop for a swim. Ray says "I'm only going in when me feet touch the bottom". I says "4-5,000M is to deep to be thinking about doing that sort of stuff!"
Our ability to send and receive emails, position and progress (blog) reports is a big plus. No bout a doubt it! The study time & effort to obtain advanced/full amateur licence is allowing us virtually unlimited SSB send/receive time using Winlink (http://www.winlink.org), which is only available to maritime mobile operators holding full amateur licence. I have to thank my good friends at North West Amateur Radio Club, Standish, Wigan (http://www.northwest-arc.org.uk) for accommodating my needs by offering to let me sit the RSGB examinations 'on-demand' before time ran out last month whilst home UK.

Barbados is now only 888 NM away from us and in last 24 hours we're 126 NM nearer and we've passed through 151 NM (on our log).
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Ticketeeboo MMSI 235071989 Callsign 2CED3, Ham = m0hng
At 14/01/2014 14:00 (utc) our position was 16°34.75'N 044°47.12'W
http://blog.mailasail.com/ticketeeboo
www.winlink.org/dotnet/maps/positionreportsDetail.aspx?callsign=m0hng