Well the day after I wrote our last entry 'bird' did the gentlemanly thing and took a flight into the great yonder.  Relief all-round.  Most amazingly his departure signalled the change in the weather.  Since then we have experienced a lot of beautiful blue skies, tradewinds of 15 to 20 knots from the South East and generally lovely sailing.  The motion has been rather more than one would ask for as the swells are from the South and we have had the wind only just aft of the beam until recently.  For many days we experienced a lot of favourable current and we had two days of over 200 miles and five of over 190.  The only real discussion was whether to reef or put rolls in the genoa or not.  This idyll was interspersed with some huge squalls/downpours at night.  As the moon has been nearly full the latter can be seen marching towards one.  Sometimes they have wind, sometimes rain and sometimes both.  It keeps the crew suitably busy!

Only yesterday it was suggested by some scurrilous member of the crew that three small pictures should be sent to you all.  One of Chris slaving in the galley.  one of  Mrs R up at the mast in a downpour putting in a reef and one of me relaxed with drink and book in the cockpit.  This it was felt would show life on onboard accurately.  What nonsense.  However since this was mooted I have spent considerable time hanging over the stern trying to mend the monitor steering  vane.  I have also found my way into very inaccessible holes tracing a leak that turned out to be a pin hole failure in a pressurised water pipe.  This had soaked stored winter clothes etc.  but is now mended.  I have also traced a much bigger leak to the gland at the top of the rudder stock.  My cred is back up and such rebellious talk as mentioned earlier has stopped. 

Our little village is marching across the globe and instead of chatting over the garden fence we talk on the SSB radio twice a day.  This helps keep up the moral of any of us who are slightly down  and reminds one that there are others out there going through the same thing.  Yesterday one antipodean lady was grumbling about being soaked during the night due to an open hatch.  Apparently all her bedclothes and much else were wet.  Another Aussie chipped in 'but Pat you must be a slow learner as the same thing happened to you the night before last'.  The way this was said you could almost hear the laughs over the airwaves.

1158 miles to go and 1800 behind us.  This passage is the same distance as London to Kampala in Uganda to get things into perspective.

Happy times to you all

David Annette and Christabel