Our third day in St John’s (Saturday) dawned with warm sunshine and the knowledge that we really needed to make the leap (mostly because Drew has a life he needs to get back to), despite a distinct lack of wind in the forecast. A yacht race in the bay meant a lively start to the day amongst the crews of about seven boats rafted up by us. We received an early morning knock from the boat on our inside who wanted to leave. Luckily, Ricardo still operates efficiently when half asleep and, dare I say, still slightly inebriated. He even had time to look exasperated as Barra developed some finger trouble during his attempt to tie a bowline knot. His excuse seemed to be something about doing it back to front. I can’t judge as, for me, the round the tree, up the hole rigmarole only works in a controlled, stress-free environment. Add any extenuating factors such as weather or necessity for speed and my finger to brain connection fails. Anyway, a brief knot lesson followed for all of us.

One last problem presented itself when the auxiliary battery gave up the ghost. We decided we could do without it, meaning the only thing affected is the bow thruster. We’ll worry about that when we get to Falmouth! We slipped in the early afternoon and, after weaving our way out through the racing boats, sailed out into a thankfully fog-free ocean – giving us the chance to look at the spectacular Newfoundland coastline which was denied us on the way in.

We made good progress with the spinnaker up until the early hours of Sunday morning when we were forced to motor. We let Drew think we’d forgotten it was his 21^st until the Champagne was deployed at midday – not the way he had imagined spending his landmark birthday.

Fear of the doldrums is driving Ricardo insane and, on downloading the latest Grib weather file, he decided we should head north in search of wind. Apparently, a huge area of high pressure has settled over a large part of the Atlantic, meaning our initial hopes of a 14-day passage looks now more like 19 days. Of course, the guys are praying for wind, whereas I am a little more in the ‘be careful what you wish for’ school of thought. However, Ricardo is easily bored and, having fixed, glued and sand-papered everything on the boat, I fear he many now dismantle the vessel and start again. His suggestion for us to discuss the concept of time was followed by a stunned silence from everyone. Then Barra chipped in with ‘I wonder what the first man to milk a cow was thinking’. Meanwhile, fishing lines have been cast from the stern and are providing some entertainment in the form of gulls running over the water trying to catch the rubber bait. We did manage some decent sailing at about 6kts, but then motored all night – which was freezing incidentally. Being somewhat nearer Greenland than the Azores than I anticipated, I may have under-packed on the thermal clothing front.

Jules

Picture: Drew marks his 21^st with Champagne on Sunday