The crew speaks...

Yacht Ariel
Henry Adams
Tue 23 Oct 2007 16:35
Dear All,
Henry and I have decided that, for the time being
at least, we will compose individual entries to the web diary to ensure a
breadth of writing talent, interest and detail, with me providing the first
two and Henry the last, which will, hopefully, at least interest some of
the people some of the time.
We find ourselves, as, doubtless, Henry has already
informed you, in the beautiful town square of Porto Santo's only apparent
town, rinsing the free wireless internet service (on which we have been working
for close to three hours now (while downloading some new music)) drinking
glass-bottled coke and eating mega sandwiches, a welcome change from the limited
range of gastronomic delight our galley slave can achieve
onboard.
It only took us four and a bit days sailing under
clear brilliant blue skies and blazing sunshine to get here from Lagos on the
Portugese mainland, probably a good thing as I'm as pink as an overripe
raspberry already, due to some rather cavalier application of suncream
yesterday. The crossing was without major incident after the first day or so,
which was spent gaining our sealegs and, therefore, feeling most uncomfortable.
Henry seemed to feel this worse than I did, his stomach having the strength of a
wet paper bag for about 36 hours as he lay around genreally feeling tired and
sorry for himself. I must admit that even my soncrete receptivcle of a stomach
suffered a bit, but didn't tell Henry that, as it would encourage him to
continue moping. I will brush over the breaking of the gooseneck as it was
discovered by me and I am not one to blow my own investigative trumpet. I wiil
concede, however, that once I had flagged the problem, Henry successfully formed
a planm implemented with my ready aid.
The original watch system continued to work well,
as it did across Biscay, although Henry's idea of four hour watches was
fundamentally flawed because one person ended up doing eight hours, while the
other had only four. It is not easy staying awake for your second 4-hour shift
from 4am as we both proved, dozing contentedly underneath the brilliant stars.
Henry's idea of being on watch, incidentally, seems to involve lying on his
backs and gazing rather dreamily up at the stars trying to identify
constellations. I would find it hard to properly convey the excitement with
which he greeted me at the beginning of my 2am watch the other night, when he
had successfully identified the different components of Orion the hunter. It's a
wonder he ever got to sleep he was so excited.
I am very much enjoying the sun after a British
summer spent in an office and am trying (already I realise this may be in vain)
to catch up with Henry's tan, obtained by three months of Mediterrnean sunshine.
This lead, yesterday, to some rather impressive pinkness, connected to a rather
cavalier approach to suncream applicaiton for the first time on the trip. It's
remarkable how easy it is to ignore when you're on the water. The temperature
here remains perfect (in the shade) and we have already taken advantage of some
of the 15km of deserted sandy beach.
My skipper (ha) has informed that people might not
have time to read all this gumph, but then realised that most of you have office
jobs and very little to actually do other than let us entertain you and bring a
little bit of the sunshine, which we have in spades here, into your daily
lives.
Have to go now, as am feeling a bit tired after an
ice cream and want a sleep before hitting the ba=each again. Lots of
love
Foshy
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