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