Today we discuss: what exactly do we do each day?; Why Bill is everybody’s best friend on the boat; Party planning gets underway;

 

After the travails of yesterday, we were treated to a relatively quiet night. While the front continued to provide many opportunities for us to get wet, we succeeded in evading them all. As well, the wind was generally steady, the seas relatively flat so we all had relaxed watches and restful sleeps- the key word is relatively. Imagine that your bed has springs attached to each of the four legs ( or posts for those with four poster beds) and that this was attached to a flat bed truck/lorry that drove over a gravel road with pot holes, sloping sides and sleeping policemen (speed bumps to our North American friends) scattered randomly but in close order. The result would be a bouncy bed that would be more fun for the kids to bounce on than mum and dad trying to get a good night’s sleep.  There are a few trick of the trade, including how to avoid rolling side side. Mrs Rush likes her space when sleeping and any encroachment is met with the same sharp elbows as one receives if one is merely breathing deeply (or snoring as she claims). In effect, you have to put yourself in the recovery position that they teach you in first aid—or that you have been put into by your friends if you have had a couple snifters too much. IN this way, if the boat rolls from side to side, you are steady as a rock and are rewarded with a pain free night of sleep.

 

In any event, we have been asked if we are getting bored looking out at and endless expanse of water and sky. The truth is, we have just been too busy to start to get bored. There are certain things that we must all do- first are the watches- we have explained our rotation previously, but, each day we typically will have 7 hours that we are responsible for boat. We then have items on the Rota.. so, for example, today is the first day of a 4 day rotation (4 people, 4 days in the rotation- pretty obvious, really)—so we have called this Day A, not “Day, eh?” as our Canadian readers might have expected, just simple Day A.  Our tasks for this day were: 4

 

Jane: Morning safety check, make Bread and put away the night equipment. Twice daily one of us will walk around the boat with a two page aide memoire of areas to look on the boat to ensure that it remains safe- things like lines wearing through (chafe) and fasteners coming undone are two common items; Every 2 days we make fresh bread with our, you guessed it, bread maker; each night we take out our night equipment- this includes Man Over Board fobs that we wear on our life jackets and that will trigger an emergency horn in the boat should we fall over; high powered search light; misc head torches, knives etc. 

 

Kevin; Evening Safety Check; Tidy dinner; The safety check was explained with Jane’s jobs; Tidy dinner is self explanatory- because my watch is not until 4 a.m. I have the longest to go before I wake up so it makes sense for me to be the one to clean up after dinner.  Check Fruit and veg- each day we look at our fresh items to make sure none are going rotten and they get turned; to

 

Jane: Prepare/Tidy lunch and wash Breakfast and lunch dishes and tidy saloon: although we each get our own breakfast, we do not wash up the dishes until lunch in order to conserve on our water; the saloon is the interior space of our boat and it gets vacuumed/wiped down and tidied each day;

 

Mike: Prepare/Tidy happy hour; tidy cockpit and put out the night equipment- although we are a dry boat, it doesn’t mean we aren’t happy. So each day, around 4:30 we will get together with a glass of tonic, juice etc along with some (very healthy) snacks and have a chat about the day; the cockpit is the area in the back of the boat that we spend a lot of time in and so it gets swept and wiped down each day;

 

Bill: Prepare dinner- given that we prefer to cook our meals as we go along, one person is responsible each day for its preparation;

 

So these are our daily task and just as we switch up the watches we also switch the person who is responsible for each activity each day- in this way, everyone will do the same amount of tasks over the four day rotation. If we then add the odd (but, just about mandatory) afternoon snooze- it leaves very little time for other pursuits- we have over 100 movies on board- not a single one has been watched.

 

We all have been watching Bill though—and very carefully as well. It seems he is on a hot streak when it comes to fishing. This morning, just seconds after he put his lure in the water, he had a fish on the line. As we were sailing and we didn’t slow down, the fish eventually worked its way off of the hook. It took a couple more hours, but, sure enough Barnacle Bill had his hook in another fish and was slowly reeling it in- and it was a big one—about 65 cm long and 7 or so pounds.  Bill has cleaned the fish and it is going to be the special that is being offered for tomorrow’s dinner. We are not exactly sure what breed of fish- despite having a couple fishing books on board—but, that wont’ stop our enjoyment. For this reason, Bill is the most popular person on board!

 

The full ‘70’s outfits have been carefully laid out—tomorrow, if the winds remain the same way they were today, we shall be celebrating reaching the mid- point of the journey across the pond!! We have estimated that by taking the (southern) great circle route that we have, the total distance is 2,900 nm and we will have crossed 1,450 nm in the latter part of the day. It will also be the one  day that we break the alcohol free zone and enjoy a glass of wine or beer over our dinner- unless you are Jane, who has a small bottle of champagne that she is going to pop.  So please feel free to join us in the celebration- it gives you an excuse to have a drink very early in the morning if you are on the west coast of Canada/US. That cant be a bad thing?

 

 

That’s is about it for today- we hope this finds you well,

 

Best wishes,

 

The Crew of Libeccio