Day 7 (Tuesday) 23:30N 29:12W

Ticketeeboo
Sue & Alan
Tue 7 Jan 2014 14:28
0500: After quite a busy & productive start to the day yesterday, in the afternoon I managed an hour's nap in the sack, after which we decided we can resume sailing and maintain between 4 & 5kn for most of the evening, overnight occasionally up to 6kn (ever the optimist!) although a slightly more southern aspect, requiring winds to back a little, would be splendid for us. In about 24 hours time we could see some cloud, possible even bit of rain (hmmmm) and increasing + backing winds (yeah!!!) for few days. This should help us dive south bit more.
Much enjoyed tuna & chips for evening meal last night, tuna & chips. Although tuna slightly under-cooked. Probably because a 2" thick tuna steak takes longer to cook the middle bit?. Ray, satisfied with my explanation that fresh tuna can be eaten this way finished his off smartish, I cooked some of my 2" thick lump a while longer and it was lovely. No more fishing until freezer has some space in it.
Our intention is to start on Sue's menu list as soon as we run-out of fresh stuff, which needs eating first.
Slept like a log from 1230 - 0400 and could be best snooze so far. Maybe this is because I made a point to read a little before lights out? No other traffic spotted by eyeball/AIS/radar so we remain a little blob in this little part of the ocean for a while.
Have some additional responsibilities today, after Tom (s/y Halfmoon) asked us to resume net-control on Tuesdays. This'll be fun (again). It's not so easy taking other yacht's details & sharing them about when taking into account the vastness of the ocean. Relay, and relay of the relay is not unknown. The fun starts if anyone becomes confused with UT and local time because time zones now vary as well as a proposal to restart the a.m. net at 1000 UT (was 0800 UT, which became 'informal' recently) so we're intending to do an information call on 6516/8131/12359 kHz at 0800 UT, followed by a cheerful resumed less-formal net 1000 UT followed by more formal net 1900 UT. So today, being Tuesday, might be busy at times?
1200: A good morning, more relaxed with very little to do after checking round the deck. Decided would replace our worn nylon fuller roller with my newly made derlin furler roller (hand crafted by me!).
As can be seen (below) our run made good is not frightfully speedy at present although the forecast is promising increasing swell from N (lovely prospect because it's already 4m!) increasing and backing winds so a roughish sea as well. This is expected midnight'ish or early morning and when this happens we can fork left and speed-up - an exciting and adventurous prospect, which we are looking forward to.
Importantly, we now estimate we have just over 50% of Jackie's Christmas cake left to consume. Naturally we need to ration it carefully because Ray won't leave it alone! We find it tastes best accompanying our afternoon smoko (coffee/tea break).
Ray & me are getting along fine and although we've never sailed together before we are beginning to read each other with humorous regularity. I was thinking of doing a wash overnight and when Ray was about to hit the sack at 2000 I asked him if he had any clothes to wash. He said "Hang on a minute, I'll take these off & give you them". He was amused when I replied "Well rap them up in your tea shirt cause I don't wanna touch them if there still warm!!!

Most direct route towards Barbados is now 1840 NM
In last 24 hours we have sailed through 124NM of water and our run made good is 104NM.
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Ticketeeboo MMSI 235071989 Callsign 2CED3, Ham = m0hng
At 07/01/2014 13:23 (utc) our position was 23°30.92'N 029°14.10'W
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