WIND!!!!!
At last after several days of light
winds, at dusk yesterday the long hoped for wind shift into the North East
transpired. The spinnaker was put away and we began to beam reach directly
towards our target. The breeze built steadily throughout the night and dawn
found Great Escape surfing on deep blue Atlantic ocean rollers – sometimes at
11+ kts!
The log shows that over the last 24
hours we have covered 194 NM – a big improvement on recent days. We now have
less than 1,000 NM to go to St Lucia and this evening the otherwise dry ship
Great Escape is celebrating this milestone with champagne. Even now, the
bleeping of the smoke alarm indicates that Jan is preparing canapés to
complement the bubbly.
While the business of sailing as fast
as we can has occupied some of the crew’s attention today, we have still found
time to address other important issues. Chief amongst these is discussing and
debating what we should eat as the variety and freshness of our provisions
continue to decline.
It seems that tonight we will be
treated to vegetable curry. Apart from the accompanying rice all the vegetables
come from a jar or can. There was some talk of adding chorizo to the curry – in
contrast to other staples we are terminally long of processed porcine products –
until it was pointed out that adding meat would disqualify the meal as a
vegetable curry.
The crew has also found time to
‘play’. The attached photo shows
Nikki, Fabio and Jan rediscovering the thrill of gravity – a sort of waterborne
game of see saw without the see or saw.
Another week of this and I fear maturity levels may be permanently
impaired.
Peter
m_DSC02110[1]