21:21.5N 22:39.5W

Beans and Chick Peas

The beans are starting to work - wind is increasing, fortunately not on the nose (sailing term for wind against you, nothing to do with olfactory nerve activity). We now have ENE winds at 15 to 20 knots, more or less day and night, yesterday's log almost made 150 nm which is good for this boat. We are beginning to see more boats which is comforting in some ways. The plan now is to head roughly SW until we find the right hand bend to take us West, i.e. the Trade winds. We are about 200 nm North of the Cape Verdes, so with luck we'll hang a right within the next 24h. Boat and crew holding up well, chewing our way through some 'interesting' menus - perhaps we should publish a TransAt cook book. 'How many ingredients can you put in one meal without throwing up?'

The continual and unpredictable boat motion is beginning to get to us (already?) - my toast slid into my lap this morning, butter side down, right onto my best pink shorts - and they were clean on 3 weeks ago! We are working a 4 on, 8 off, watch pattern round the clock, and switching order every 3 days - so we have to get there in 18 days or someone will be upset. Seriously though, it's all working well at the moment - then they do describe this trip a the 'Milk Run'.

Rob has booked his flights to the Caribbean - anyone else fancy sunny, palm-fringed beaches and rum cocktails in Jan, Feb, Mar....?  I will send proposed itinerary on request.

We will take it easy on the pics for a while until we see how the sat phone mins are holding out.

Cheers for now, P, T & P