Almost Mid Atantic
SY Tosca
Ashley Atkinson and Nathan Golder
Fri 11 Dec 2009 07:50
position 19:27:00N 33:28:25W
It's 6 o'clock in the morning the sun will be
rising in an hour or so. The weather has been perfect hot sunny days and warm
cloudless nights. The stars are amazing, there are so many, they reflect off the
calm flat water and it seems like you are flying in a sea of stars. If you have
ever been on the Peter Pan ride at Disneyland - well its like that but for
real!
We have the big Spinnaker flying all the time now
and what was previously a hard work sail before has come into its own, it lifts
the bow of the boat out of the water effortlessly. It really is true when they
say you put the sails up when you leave and don't touch them until you
take them down again on to the other side...well almost, we had a moment
yesterday when it came crashing down unintentionally and fell over the bow
and into the water. The shackle holding it within its chute had broken but
luckily we managed to get the sail reattached and back up within 10 minutes with
no rips or damage.
Yesterday, we didn't have much wind so we made
water, did the laundry then washed the boat down. If anyone could see
us we would have looked funny in full sail but with the bed sheets also
flying in the wind.!
We have only seen one other boat out here and
that was 5 days ago and he was 5 miles away! We do however have radio
contact with some other boats that are also crossing, the closest one to us is
over 80 miles away and then over 200 miles before the next one! It
may seem like a small world but it s a big ocean.
It seeems hard to believe that Christmas is
only a couple of weeks away. We bought a leg of pork in Las Palmas to
make a Christmas ham and it has been soaking/marinading for over a week now,
however I don't think it can last much longer so I'm going to boil it later
today and see how it goes. I do't think we will get a traditional Christmas
lunch this year....which would be a first for me..but we'll see. We do have a
backup plan in the fridge - a sirloin joint which we will BBQ if we can't
get a turkey!!
Ashley
If anyone wants to ring us we have a satellite
phone which is on between 7 and 8 pm UTC (UK time) + (00) 88 163 168
2299
|