DAY 8 (Sat 21 Nov)

A day of high winds (up to 30 knots), high speeds and – less fun – high seas. After whingeing about the lack of blow in the early part of the voyage, it was a case of careful what you wish for as a forecast Force 5 quickly became a 6 and occasionally a 7 (classified as a ‘near gale’).

We were warned the Atlantic crossing would involve more sail changes than we were used to – and this has proved true. Saturday morning (3am) saw the spinnaker brought down, the genoa poled out (eventually trimmed to a rakish cut reminiscent of a yankee sail) and the main sail gybed several times and reefed thrice – all in response to the increasingly whippy conditions.

The crew has actually got quite good at this rapid sail changing lark – even in choppy waters. Captain K at the helm, me at the winches (‘grinding monkey’), Kitkat at the mast and Colin right up front near the pulpit dealing with swinging poles and other hazards. Most of our success is down to talking about what we’re going to do before we start doing it. We’d tried mind reading before and it just didn’t work as well.

Just before midday, Sinan broke through 1,000 miles – but there were no celebrations on board (mainly because we stopped looking at the trip log at about 980 miles and then forgot all about the impending milestone of one-third of the journey completed).

This was a day when the sea and the wind really dominated affairs. Most of the afternoon was spent checking that the wind speed wasn’t exceeding 30 knots (34-40 counts as a Force 8 and therefore a gale). Waves – their direction and height – also occupied our attention. The bigger ones from behind tended to ‘corkscrew’ Sinan through the water, which can be spectacular but wastes boat energy.

Light relief came in the shape of Kitkat trying to create special effects for his film. This involved him rolling an orange up and down the cockpit deck. Apparently, the idea was to give the viewer an idea of the boat’s angle of tilt. Usually, Captain K likes to keep a clear cockpit but seemed strangely taken with the new star of his son’s movie. He insisted the orange was, in fact, Russell Crowe and should be given his own trailer (one of the cup holders in the cockpit table). And just in case Russell got mixed up with the wrong crowd (ie: the other 242 non-famous oranges on board sailing’s most overstocked boat), the skipper used a marker pen to give the Gladiator star hair, eyes, a smile and a stubbly beard.

As Kitkat drew parallels with Tom Hanks in Castaway, Captain K decided to have a long lie down.

With the skipper mumbling “we should have taken the plane” in his sleep, Colin took the opportunity to shin it up the mast to sit in the main sail bag (see photo). Thinking he’d forgotten his passport, I offered to zip the bag up for him as a way of slipping him past the Antiguan authorities. But he simply wanted to take some more arty shots of the spinnaker, which may soon need an agent.

Sticking a third reef in the main sail (to further reduce the amount of canvas exposed to the stronger winds) was the early evening chore. There are few things that can make this task anything other than a pain in the backside. So when a flying fish (or possibly a pied wagtail) leapt from the waves to slap Kitkat across the back of the head we counted ourselves as fortunate. Stunned, the 16 year old thought initially he’d been the victim of an unprovoked assault by a fellow crew member. But a frantic flapping sound in the port side ropes followed by a silvery-blue flash back into the sea revealed the assailant to be a local.

Had the flying fish been hired by the family of the dourade so cruelly feasted upon by the crew just days before? Is revenge a dish best served with sticky rice cooked in chicken stock?

Anyone with further information about the attack should visit www.justgiving.com/atlanticoceansail and leave a donation.

Keep ‘em peeled!

RWD