DAY 7 (Fri 20^th Nov)

Just before lunch I spotted half a dozen small birds flying low over the sea to our stern. The amateur ornithologist in me kicked in and, with some confidence, I yelled “pied wagtails!” A moment later the fast moving birds had disappeared into the drink. Gathering my thoughts, I reflected on two facts about pied wagtails:

a)    They tend not to stray 1,000 miles from land

b)    They rarely, if ever, dive into the Atlantic Ocean

“Flying fish!” I shrieked. “Flying fish – that look just like pied wagtails!”

In the very limited amount of free time we have aboard, crew members often choose to dip into a book. Kitkat, who is supposed to be reading Thomas Hardy for his English A-Level, is rarely seen without his nose in a biography of Francis Ford Coppola. Kit’s very much into movies and the making of them, hence his near constant filming of this voyage. This can, on occasion, be a little intrusive, but the rest of the crew take it in good spirit. One can only hope that his extremely expensive Canon camera doesn’t fall into the water before we reach Antigua. That would be a shame.

It’s great to see a young man so enthralled by a book. Indeed, he’s taken to asking us questions inspired by the Coppola text, which the rest of us have really enjoyed. Brain teasers like “who was the sound designer on Apocalypse Now?” can make a day at sea just swing by.

Colin, when he’s not fixing something, is re-reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. His latest project involved taking the backboards off from behind the bunks in the stern cabin (which he shares with me) to squirt some WD40 onto the rudder’s ‘stuffing box’ (don’t ask – I did and I still don’t understand what one is). Anyway, what might be described as the rudder flatulence keeping us up at night has now gone – and we’ve stopped blaming each other for the noise.

Captain K is, slowly, making his way through Anthony Beevor’s excellent D-Day, which I read on the Lagos to Lanzarote leg of this voyage earlier this year. He’s threatened to kill me if I tell him “what happens at the end”.

Me? I’m reading Me, Cheeta, the ‘autobiography’ of Tarzan’s favourite chimp. Very good it is, too. And, let’s face it, it’s slightly easier going than The Complete Works of Michel de Montaigne (sorry mum – it was a great present and I will get round to reading it).

Our obsession with the spinnaker sail grows. We kept it up all last night – something we lacked the confidence to do the night before. Even then, Captain K had us all on our toes as darkness fell, lest one of the moody looking clouds ahead turned out to be the one which would give us an unwanted burst of wind. It was a case of life jackets, safety lines, flash lights, action stations and quite a lot of instructions, issued in a strange, hushed bark. In my opinion, Mr Beevor’s next book should be about flower arranging.

As we endured some of the smoothest, gentlest sailing any of us have experienced, the men became twitchy. “How long till we hit those clouds then, skipper?” I asked. “Imminent. No more than 45 minutes,” replied a square jawed Captain K.                                                        

“Can I go to the toilet, then?”

“No. Maintain your position.”

Today saw us pass the 900 mile mark, comfortably more than any of us have sailed in one go before. With luck we should go through 1,000 miles at about noon tomorrow (Saturday), which we are likely to celebrate with more chicken, unless Captain K can hook the brother of what must be the unluckiest fish in the Atlantic (see picture).

RWD

PS: Don’t forget, www.justgiving.com/atlanticoceansail