Bowling along!
ULA
John & Jackie Richards
Thu 27 Nov 2008 11:47
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Position
021:58.714N 020:23.114W
Wednesday: Day 4 in the Ula house and the
watch leader of the newly named 'Alpha Watch' (see later) was summoned to the
diary room by Big Brother to explain why his midnight to 4 watch had scoffed the
entire contents of the night watch 'goodie box' leaving Bat Watch to raid
further supplies. There was further admonishment for forgetting to wish Nicola a
Happy Wedding Anniversary from Andrew in yesterday's blog. The excuse that the
third night at sea had been a bit slow due to lack of wind and something was
needed to boost crew morale was accepted and calm returned.Andrew can now spell divorce after lessons from Adrian and I
using the phonetic alphabet but we sincerely hope he wont need to use it! Happy
Wedding Anniversary Nicola and apologies!
During the 8-midnight and 4am-8am watches, Bat
Watch had enjoyed a low volume disco in the cockpit thanks to Adrian's MP3
player with speakers and discovered the fatal flaw in a game of Fizz Buzz
with only three players, resorting after number 12 to a Fizz(4) and Buzz(5) to
prevent Adrian from permanently fizzing! Meanwhile it emerged over dinner
yesterday evening that the Red Watch have decided to re-name themselves the
Alpha Watch apparently because they all consider themselves to be type 'alpha'
males! No....oooo - really?????
Yesterday morning crew morale was boosted with hair
washes and showers and what looked to be a better weather forecast. We had
a good day with the wind picking up, a sundowner and a good dinner. At time of
blooging (11am Thursday) we are hoping our tactics of heading further South
towards the Cape Verde islands to avoid what seems to be an area of very light
winds will work. Since early yesterday afternoon, and all through the night, we
have been bowling along with just the spinnaker up making between 210-240
degrees and averaging 6-7knots, and at times reaching over 8 knots in winds from
around 9 knots up to about 17knots occaisonally. We will be getting the new
weather forecast shortly and will probably gybe on to a more westerly course
assuming it follows the pattern we expect from yesterday's forecast. We have
just spoken to another ARC boat Pigalopp, a Norwegian Beneteau Oceanis 43 who is
within around 8 miles of us and in similar conditions.
The crew are in good spirits and we are having
plenty of laughs along the way. Howard is now within 2 miles of our GPS with his
sextant, Andrew is in the process of learning all the main stars and practising
for a Su Doku championship. Adrian is still trying to catch us a fish. We are
one lure down so far - we must be going too fast!? Expectations are high
for tonight's dinner.
Thinking of everyone back home. Jackie
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