Bernie’s Blog - Day 7 – Saturday 30^th July 2011

Leg Five: Azores to Dartmouth

Hallelujah.  This morning at 0750 we caught a 2 ½ ft tuna weighing about 12 lbs. Another box ticked! And this evening we shall be eating ‘pan fried freshly hand-line caught North Atlantic tuna steaks’ – as the restaurants would state these days. What will accompany the tuna we shall have to wait and see.

Well done Andy; and his perseverance and patience [St Mark Ch 6 ver 42]

We are now just over two-thirds the way home with 800 miles to go; so the skipper has opened the sweepstake. To give you some indication of when you might see us again, here are the various bids for being due south of the Lizard in Cornwall:

Peter (Skipper) 1200 on Thursday 4 August;

Bernie 1915 on Thursday;

Andy 2200 on Thurday,

Christine 0155 on Friday 5 August

Darrell 0300 on Friday.

So add to that a possible ‘run ashore’ in Falmouth, we should be in Dartmouth on Saturday 6^th August. We will keep you informed.

The skipper has just given us a test to check that we know what all the fixed ropes are for. All 12 of them. Andy did very well …..again. An embarrassed silence from the rest of us. We will do better.

The weather is still fair and we are sailing well. We had a bit of drizzle overnight but today the sun is shining and the washing is on the guardrails!

What do we do when we are not on watch, sleeping or eating? Reading, listening to podcasts, chatiing and generally ‘chewing the fat’ about the world’s problems.

All is well with us and our home Susan Ayu; and this time next week we should be with you or nearly with you.

Have a good weekend.