Its time to update you all again. Things are looking up, we have
resolved our issues keeping the freezer cold by turning it off and moving
everything to the fridge!! the only issue is that we have a lot of meat that is
steadily in need of eating before it goes off. At least we have the right
crew for the job.
No fish to report and a distinct lack of wildlife over the past few
days. On the positive side however, yesterday we all had a good wash in a
rain shower, quite a funny sight. We all got lathered up with shampoo and
then hope for sufficient rain to wash. We have also started to pick up the
pace a little with an average speed of 7knots through the day and night over the
past 24 hours. This has helped our position a little and we are optimistic
that we can take few more boats over the next 24 hours if we can maintain our
pace with the spinnaker flying.
Other news to report, a flying fish landed on deck during one of the night
watches landing on Drew’s leg. We were all surprised with how small it was
in comparison to the tuna and dorado that we had been catching on the line
previously.
No major breakages either which is good, other than the mayonaise which
came flying from the fridge at over 100mph when Gary opened the fridge on the
wrong tack.
Karen cooked an apple pie yesterday evening which boosted morale no end –
it was really tasty and a great way of using up a few of the apples which are
starting to get bruised.
Igor has been happily snapping with his camera, I think he has about 2,000
photographs so far – we estimate about 8 days to go with just over 1000nm to go
so still plenty of opportunities to full his memory cards up. The other
challenge for Igor is to arrive at St Lucia by the morning of the 17 December in
order that he can catch his flight home so we are doing all that we can to
achieve this.
We treated ourselves to a real cup of coffee today which is a big deal as
the coffee machine, who we call the red penguin given his looks, takes a lot of
power from our batteries. Anyway, we all enjoyed the treat especially with
the last of Cor’s chocolate that he kindly gave us to celebrate St Nicholas’
day.
As I write the swell is up and we are riding the waves with the parasailor
flying, averaging about 6knots. We are all working hard to keep our
average speed up in order that we do not drop any places having reached 161 in
the overall rankings.
Adios for now.
Nick and the Abraxas team