When we say pause, we really do mean just that, as the wind has entirely 100% paused completely. When we turn the engine off, there is NO wind. Not even enough of a breath to turn the anemometor cups at the top of the mast.
So, how does a typical day go on board Amelie?
Well, it starts with when one of the on-watch crew wanders down below, and are accosted by a loud and slightly unsettling "Good morning" bellowed out in a friendly manner from one of Amelie's two aft cabins. Well, actually, to be a little more specific, its always the same cabin - which is the one that Per, who is Amelie's owner, currently inhabits. This cry is very quickly followed up by the query "Any coffee yet", which is more or less what passes for a "command" on board Amelie. Indeed, its probably the only command that Per is likely to issue all day, as he likes to run a relaxed affair, except of course for taking what some might consider a rather over-detailed involvement in the technical details of any coffee making activity.
This is often followed by a noise from up near the bows - no, we haven't actually hit a whale (although we have come close on some occasions!), its actually Mike emerging from the forward cabin with what some might consider an over-cheerful attitude for such an early time of day, asking if anyone has thought about starting to cook breakfast. Gradually, other souls emerge from the various of Amelie's five well appointed cabins, and pour themselves into the saloon, with many roaming around in a bit of a shiftless manner, firing off questions like "How far did we travel in the night", "was anyone sick", and soon ranging to "did we lose anyone overboard", "what's for lunch", "what movie are we screening this evening", and "is the report of a McDonalds in Horta correct, or are some of our loved ones merely attempting to wind us up".
This more or less sets the scene for the rest of the day, which lurches from watch, to watch, to watch; we all stand a four hour watch, and we "dog" so that we only spend two hours with the same watch crew before one of them changes. Clearly, this is NOT to be confused with "dogging" which we understand means something entirely different.
Of course, very sadly, we lost Deborah in Bermuda to some savage tropical desease which attacked her leg, and this has had the knock-on effect of deteriorating the language on board, as, with seven guys on board, we are hardly likely to say "Oh, terribly sorry to bump into you like that old chap, try harder next time", and far more likely to say "Out the f..king way".......
Supper is generally a communal affair, where we all gather up on Amelie's lovely and widely expansive poop deck where a variety of comestibles are served, depending upon which particular vegetables and game are in season. Well, by season, a more accurate term is probably "rumage". In other words, supper is whatever we rummage around and find in the bilge that hasn't yet been eaten. Whilst we haven't yet been reduced to such delicacies as tinned-pinapple-in-baked-beans or spam-enhanced-pot-noodle, or even corn-flakes-in-tomato-sauce, we have managed to cook ourselves a good old-fashioned English delicacy of bread-and-butter-pudding. A large number of White Russians made a notable appearance in the cockpit this evening, suitably prepared by our resident chef Kasper, who also rustled up this evening's culinary delight of a Spanish Paella.
As night falls, the stars replace our lovely warm sun as the waves splash quietly against the hull and we speed towards Europe. Well, we say that the waves splash quitely against the hull, but, of course, we don't know that for sure because there is not the slightest chance of anyone on Amelie hearing them because even if we turned our huge diesel engine off completely, the stereo - which does, contrary to what any member of Amelie's crew might state as a fact when formally interviewed in port, actually, have a very wide reportoire that extends much further than the Norwegian Top 40 pop songs of 1979 - would surely still drown out anything quieter than a jumbo jet at takeoff.
We have just 368 miles to go to Horta in the Azores, so that's just a few short strides for Amelie, after which we hope for warm showers, clean clothes, and, of course, that ever elusive McDonalds............
Cheers
The crew of Amelie D'Oslo