31:05:87N 10:58:59W

We must be getting soft.  On night watch I realised I was rugged up in leggings, jeans, deck shoes and sox, polar fleece, puffer vest, musto jacket and even a beanie and gloves!  David also headed up with at least four layers on. When we looked at the thermometer this morning it was 20degrees….hmm definitely The Big Chill (for us).  Still every day we head south is a day closer to the warmth – about 35degrees is good for us.

Bandit has made startling progress – don’t think we’ve ever made such consistently good speeds on passage.  Yesterday afternoon we put the spinnaker up which David decided to film.  Without going into details let’s just say the video has been deleted.  We did finally get the spinnaker up and Bandit was hitting 9knots at times.  We took it down before dark and sailed gull winging with the genoa poled out – a safer option at night.

We ground our way through night watch with the help of Jack Reacher, a big school of dolphins and our trusty egg timer.  For those who haven’t read Lee Childs, his Jack Reacher novels are the best books for a long plane trip or night watch – readable and mindless trash.  The egg timer means we can safely snooze for 10-15 mins.

We were delighted to hear on our morning radio check in that we are not the last boat to leave the Med.  Kiwi boat Muskatelle with Wellingtonians Peter and Barbara and a cat they picked up in Turkey are about 150 miles behind us.  Hope they remember to turn out the lights – there will be hardly anyone left in the Med now.