The wind is supposed to come today.  Around noon there was enough (10-13 kn)  to put up the asymmetric and for a few hours we had a delightful respite from the engine and actually made faster progress (6.5 kn).  Lots of book reading going on as we eat up the miles.  But the wind hasn’t held up and mid afternoon it changed direction forcing us to slow down and head too far North.  So we’re back on engine again - still waiting for the promised blow.  It’ll probably arrive just as it gets dark.  

Loads of flying fish today.  I spend ages trying to get a picture of them, but they’re so small and move so fast that so far I’ve not managed. I almost believe they’re deliberately avoiding me.  At one point, after having waited, camera in hand, for 15 minutes and seen not a one, I gave up and put the phone back in my pocket only for three of the little blighters to leap out of the water right beside me and shoot off into the distance in convoy, swerving around the wave tops before plopping back into the blue about 100m away.  I swear they were laughing all the way.

The bread maker has finally come into its own.  It has now produced a wholemeal brown and a white gluten-free loaf.  Both reasonably successful.  I’m not sure David approves of it, it’s quite large and very much of plastic white-goods appearance. Not a speck of stainless steel on it I’m afraid.  And it takes 5 hours to make a loaf.  It was a novelty though, to smell fresh baked bread on board and if you want toast and marmalade for breakfast…

It’s rather sobering right now looking at the navigation chart.  We’re over the mid-atlantic and it’s suddenly got proper deep.  The bottom contours are now marked in kilometres and are all twisty and turny.  4 km one minute suddenly becomes 5 km in a very short distance and then it’s back again to 4.  What a different world it must be down there in these steeply sided fissures miles underneath us. Can’t imagine there’s anything friendly down there.  No swimming today.

Now - since the sun’s definitely below the yard-arm there’s a little job I must do…