Day Three - light winds

Tripled
Fri 10 Jun 2011 00:45
At 0030 UTC our position is 42:48.6N 22:59.5W (Although this won't get sent until the morning, sorry about that!). It is currently varying 0-5 knots of wind from a westerly(ish - very variable) direction. So we are motoring on at 6 knots. For the first time in ages we have some favourable current! Only 0.2 knots though so don't get too excited.

We turned the engine on at 0200 last night as the wind dropped and veered round so that we couldn't continue to sail on our course. This afternoon the wind died completely, the ocean becoming that glassy flat way we have gotten so used to(!) and it flicked around to behind, making it much warmer. Tomorrow may well be a bikini day!

The seasickness patch has made James hallucinate slightly - seeing thumb prints everywhere he looked for a short while last night - and he is still sleeping a lot. However, he woke up in order to beat us all at scrabble this afternoon. Mid-game mum cries "whale!!!". I kept an eye on her in case this was a trick to distract us while she looked for better letters, she has been known to do this in the past. But no, there actually was a whale off our starboard side, incredibly close and unbelievably big. At least as long as the boat, we think it was a sperm whale. The whale only showed us part of it's long back, however, before diving deep/swimming somewhere away from us so we were able to continue our game! That's all on the wildlife front but at least the boys can cross off both whales and dolphins now.

We got very excited at the prospect of a beautiful sunset as the sky was beautifully clear at about 8pm. As is always the way, the sun sank into a bank of cloud and there went the sunset - very unspectacular. We then sailed into cloud so no stars tonight. I think I might have forgotten what a clear sky looks like?!!

Curry for dinner and a few glasses of a Portuguese red wine.
The forecast is for the winds to increase maybe tomorrow, maybe overnight, but from a south-westerly direction that should sweep us nicely towards the Channel. A bit more speed would be nice as it has been quite slow-going today!

Back to watch (not that there is anything to see at all!)