12:18N 40:37W

 

Crappy movie I know....one of Harrison Ford’s worst.   But as the title fits, we’re putting prejudice aside and no doubt there are people out there who thought it was great.  After all, movie watching is totally subjective.  I mean there are people out there who actually like Nicole Kidman!! (including the skipper).  I digress........yes, we’ve now been as sea now for seven nights (and seven days actually but what’s a day or two between friends?).  And most of those days have been great – fantastic sailing, good winds, reasonable seas, fresh fish, good books (more about those in another blog) and some great music on the ipod.  However, the odd day has been a bit scruffy and it’s just as well sailors have short memories. 

 

As we were sitting in the cockpit today, in glorious sunshine, those lovely puffy white clouds floating by as Bandit smoked along at 7knots, the skipper asked me if I still wanted to jump ship.  It took me a while to realise what he was getting at.   Apparently, during our Christmas Day chaos, when we sailed into a system that we’d rather not have, I think I may have mentioned something about wanting to “get off this boat”...smattered of course with the usual array of expletives prompted by spilt food, smashed plates, seasickness and tiredness.  The skipper pointed out that I had in fact said I would have happily jumped on an Indian bus (should it happen to be meandering by) – the ones with vomit stains splattered all down the sides.  He added that I even gone as far as saying that if there was no room in the bus I’d happily ride on the roof with the locals.  Forced to take all that back and admit that on the good days I wouldn’t swap this life for anything.....brought a big smile to skipper’s face.  Think he was worried I might have been eyeing up the next passing cruise ship.  (Just as well we haven’t seen any!)

 

Sailing is meant to be pleasurable and since we’ve owned Bandit, 99% of our time has been spent sailing in calm conditions, anchored in beautiful bays or tied up to docks in gorgeous Greek or Italian villages.  The Christmas Day 1% is what you have to put up with to achieve the other 99%......so I guess we’ll just keep on trucking.   Bandit continues to rock and roll her way westwards.  I lost my breakfast to a big roll this morning and that was before it was eaten. That lovely bowl full of bircher muesli, fresh fruit, yoghurt and crunchy muesli ended up upside down on the bench.....with me scraping it up spoon by spoon while the skipper tried not to laugh as he photographed the occasion.  At least I could laugh about it this time!

 

Over to the skipper. We have had dismal luck fishing the last few days so today we put the line out at just before sunrise and kept the towgen onboard. Still no luck by 1100 so we redeployed the towgen AND the fishing lure keeping it a safe distance behind Bandit to be well clear of the spinning towgen rope.  (Cook’s note....blog readers will recall a previous unpleasant incident between the fishing line and towge...methinks skipper is courting disaster).   You will hear if this worked....or not.

 

Much discussion today has been about putting the clocks back we are now another hour behind and need to make an adjustment or we will find the sun not coming up until lunchtime! When you are tired it all takes a lot of figuring out!!  So to do my attempts at astro navigation. Thank goodness for our GPS. I can get the sextant sights OK but when it comes to the maths I seem to have not only forgotten all that I learnt but can’t do the sums either!   Still it a bit of fun to help fill the day in and if all goes wobbly with the electronics I might be able to get us there!