DAY 20 (Thursday 3rd Dec)

The day started (well, for me anyway) at 3am. Captain K was seething at the end of his night watch, having suffered the indignity of seeing another yacht come from behind to catch us and then glide past us.

“Keep an eye on that light,” he said, pointing to a tiny yellow pin prick on the horizon. “And tell me if we’re gaining on them!”

The boat (Jackamy, we think) was out of sight by day break. Our drawback was we had only been able to fly one genoa overnight due to a halyard problem. That was solved first thing in the morning and we would soon be making real progress thanks to twin headsails.

But first we had another issue to deal with. The skipper fancied his luck with the rod in the breaking light. He was in the process of blessing his latest brutally hooked lure, muttering a strange incantation interspersed with unsettling yelps, when he spotted something in the water below our stern.

“There’s something rather nasty attached to either our rudder or propeller,” said Captain K, double checking he wasn’t missing a crew member before reaching for the boat hook. After some digging and grunting, a thick (at least six inches in diameter) rope emerged, for all the world looking like a ‘killer worm’ extra off Dr Who or Merlin. Brave Colin sawed through it with his pen knife and in no time the rope was cut in two and floating off. Captain K cursed the fishermen he held responsible for the rope, before reeling out his own line.

With the wind relatively kind to us all day, we made decent progress. At last, there seems to be a whiff of rum in the air rather than chicken casserole or German shampoo. But, this close to our destination, a degree of madness has taken hold (see pictures). The rope restraining me by the head has nothing to do with me running out of cigarettes three days ago - and everything to do with the fact that our skipper is using his fingers to work out complicated navigation maths.

RWD

 www.justgiving.com/atlanticoceansail