|
33o 07.4’ North 57o 59.8’ West
Cups of tea spilt: 2
‘Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.
Water, water everywhere and all the boards did shrink’
Obviously the ancient mariner didn’t have a water maker which was a bit foolish
of him. We however, have everything we need for blue water sailing and have
arrived at a state of domestic bliss. This mainly consists of Mark doing my
(Jim) cleaning jobs as I am effing useless at it apparently.
(Home Economics are proving time consuming: Jim coming to terms with the order
in which water, cleaning product and wipe-off are applied to any given
surface - whether he uses Mark’s face flannel, drying-up cloth, washing-up
cloth or floor rag will be dealt with in tomorrows lesson. Conversely Mike
leapt from his favourite corner of repose and bravely opened a packet of cookie
mix, which he had bought ALL on his own, and single handily produced biscuits
for tea!! – There is promise of pop-corn for happy-hour tonight, fear Jim is
going to get lots of cleaning practice.)
Yeah, yeah everyone’s a hero all of a sudden!
We have had a drama free night, cruising at about 6kts and have woken to
another beautiful day. The Atlantic so far is spoiling us.
We have 1603 nautical miles to go so I suspect she will have a few surprises
for us yet.
In order to redeem myself I have had some good wildlife spots. We passed right
by a large turtle on Monday which would have gone unnoticed except for my eagle
eyes. There are lots of Portuguese Men of War around which can be spotted by
their bluish sail fin above the water. This looks like a translucent blue
Cornish pasty, although I bet you can’t eat two. Yesterday in the early
hours a flying fish dropped by to say hello landing right in the cockpit. We
contemplated eating it but took pity and sent it back with an excellent caper
to tell its’ friends. This morning though our first Dolphins of the trip
– lots playing in the bow wave, we counted 12
in
total but there could have been more. More importantly I spotted them so it was
a good job I wasn’t below decks scrubbing the floor.
I also have two bird spots for all you ornithologists out there, a Cory’s
shearwater and a Sooty shearwater. Some of you (Dave and Andy) may take issue
with my identification skills but since I am here and you are not I am taking
them as a bona fide spot. (All Shite Hawks I’m afraid – Ed.)
Each day brings a small challenge on board. After repairing the leak on Sunday
night we needed to bung up the outlet pipe in the cockpit to stop water backing
up. Brian picked out the smallest bung he could find, dropped it down the hole
and watched it disappear. It took some serious engineering expertise to
retrieve it, after which Mark had a suggestion on where to stick it. Strangely
Brian was nowhere to be seen which was weird as it is not that big a boat.
(B. here – When you are confronted with a hole in the deck of the cockpit which
needs to be bunged and are handed a bung by your illustrious Captain, surely it
is not unnatural to assume that the said bung is the correct size for the job …
the reason that I was nowhere to be seen after this mishap is because I was
downstairs rootling through the toolbox, handing up various instruments with
which to attempt the extraction – eventually achieved by securing a sharp
pointy screw to a screwdriver and screwing the whole caboodle into the bung ..
and lifting)
(Mike the photographer here – the dolphins were impossible to photograph but I
did get one (kind of). I hope to have it on the blog shortly. No such
luck with the turtle who was swimming all on his own.
|
