Boat position 25.35.266N 020.29.955W  The run total for today was 158 NM but probably only 120 on our course.

 

After yesterday’s drama with the gooseneck – we have been trying to sort out problems with the autopilot today, not sure if it is just that it can’t cope with the size of these waves and that is why it keeps cutting out, or maybe it has somehow got damp.  Stephen has taken it apart and we’ve have been drying it out all day and it has just been refitted and seems to be working again.  Without it on we couldn’t get our log reading or heading on the GPS.  We’ve decided not to use it on autopilot with these waves as it doesn’t cope very well and uses stacks of power.  Poor Stephen was exhausted and has put his back out lifting the boom yesterday, but has had some rest today and has now shaved off the beard which makes him feel much better!  We are all quite happy with just flying headsails as we would be unlucky to get anything other than downwind weather.  In any case it looked unlikely that we would be able to get anything sorted out in the Cape Verde Islands, so we will try and make contact with Marin marine in Martinique which has apparently the best rigging facilities in the Caribbean, and that is where we were planning to make our landfall anyway.  Graham and Tim have been brilliant last night and today doing far more than their fair share of helming (the wind and the waves are too big for me to cope with – and Stephen has been feeling awful with his back.)

 

Have been having our afternoon tea and biscuits (the big tragedy is that we have run out of Granny’s ginger biscuits which have been wonderful!) when a school(?) of small dolphins came to join us spending about 40 minutes playing and jumping around the boat!   Tim is our resident dolphin expert and he tells us they are ‘small Atlantic dolphins’ (I think I could have guessed that!  ) , he would like to let his family know that he managed not to cry while watching them – just a small tremble of his bottom lip!  and he resisted the urge to jump in and hold onto their tails .... he thinks perhaps he was a dolphin in a past life but one who was scared of deep water!

 

We seem to have been so busy just living on the boat and haven’t had anytime even to play bridge ... missing my bridge girls! and pilates no time to do any exercises and really it’s just too bouncy to do anything other than hold on!

 

We love getting your emails!  Thank you – keep them coming!  Weather getting warmer all the time but HUGE waves just now!