Day 7 gone and continuing towards Flores, Azores 38:11N 047:53W

Ticketeeboo
Sue & Alan
Fri 23 May 2014 15:19
Start of day 8 Friday 23nd May 2014.
In position 38:11N 047:53W COG 078(T) SOG 6kn'ish sailing with poled genoa quite nicely. Wind SW F3-4 2m seas & sunny.
Flores, Azores is 080º(T) 784NM Dist Run by log in last 24 hours 120NM Dist made good towards Flores 94NM.

Tried to keep good active watch throughout hours of daylight yesterday and this morning whilst benefiing from good visibility. Almost hopeless task during hours of darkness with little or no moonlight available. This morning our course has taken us almost parallel and in-between an auxiliary naval vessel 'Gumman' 5 - 10 NM to our S and an unidentified warship (stealthy looking terror) like-for-like to our N. Thes two ships seem to be operating a grid search and we're in the middle! Unfortunately we have nothing to report because we've seen now't other than dolphins. Late morning and we're awaiting increase in winds to shift us along more speedily - in our favoured direction for next 2 or 3 days.

We gybed at midnight after I was put on shake early due to light winds and increasing swell. At this point I decided it's worth the gybe to head us E'ly in S/W winds, which has worked very well. This gybe necessitated pole in & pole out on t'other side, which is extra work for me, on deck in the dark. Fortunately we have 3 x wapping big aircraft landing lights on our mast to illuminate the deck making the job reasonably safe to me. During rest of the night we had light winds, therefore modest speed, although accompanied by a poohey 2-3m swell - typical for a rock & roll attempt at making ZZZZZZZ's!!!

We discussed Mike's recent disposition this morning, just before he started on his 2nd breakfast! Mike farts a lot (and it stinks) so my assumption put forward to mike is that he must have had lower-level internal build-up of methane giving rise to creeping failure of upper level foo-foo valve (bit like a joker valve) which allowed excess pressure to ventilate and mix in heavily worked tummy, which then directed rising gasses, together with trapped recently undigested food intake, causing sudden unwelcome explosion of mixed organic products in reverse direction through mouth expelling rapidly into bucket? So great was this sudden release of energy, the vacuum created by resulting venturi effect pulling his wi-fi earphone case along for the ride (causing the overheard 'splash!).

We believe we have about 6 days to go. That's 6 more sleeps, possible 7 (at this modest speed). Whilst we're entering the "That's the last of 'em" stages, we've lots of tasty grub in the freezer to get through. We opened our last packet of tea-bags yesterday and have worked out we don't have time to stop at any shops between here and Azores so must make 'em last. Plan B will be use-up the lemon tea granules, Earl Grey bags & anything else which can loosely pass for cuppa tea. One teabag can do minimum 3 cupas anyway so we can make 'em last! On principal, we one use one tea bag the once though, then it gets donated to the passing fishies. Talking of which, squiddies not worth it's salt since attracting that nasty Barracuda near BVI and most it's skirt has been gobbled away at.

We passed the half-way point when I came on watch last night. No flag or sign-post so had to go by plotter/GPS info. Well into 2nd half now and down-hill all the way. Our weather forecast look good for next 3 days at least, maybe even longer. Our intrepid Son-in-Law, Paul confirms no poohey Lows forming or passing through our intended direction and wapping nice High settled over the Azores, which is squeezing nasty storms to N & W of us. This is good news and we like it.......... more, more, more please......... all the way to Flores.
Ticketeeboo MMSI 235071989 Callsign 2CED3, Ham callsign = m0hng
At 23/05/2014 15:16 UT our position was 38°11.73'N 047°51.96'W
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www.winlink.org/dotnet/maps/positionreportsDetail.aspx?callsign=m0hng