Ahoy Boatbloggers,
Today has been a day of slow winds, and little progress, but despite all that there have been a few firsts.
To conserve our fresh water supplies, we had our first ever salt water shower. Well, not so much a shower, more a wash in a bucket, but you know what I mean. We've got this special shampoo which is rather unimaginatively called, "Sea Shampoo," probably because it is shampoo for the sea, and today we gave it a go.
And we're happy to tell you it works a treat. Ju even had a shave using it, and it is actually better that a fresh water shave. The salt water heals all those little nicks and scratches before you've even done them. It's brilliant. We're thinking of bottling some and bringing it back home to sell. Cap'n Ju's Atlantic Waters Shaving Balm. What do you reckon?
And talking of bringing bottled water from the Atlantic back with us, that is exactly what we are doing on behalf of a couple of Dutch scientists. They are getting a number of ARC boats to collect water which they will then analyse scientifically. They are looking for things called microplastics, which are microscopic bits of plastic, and it seems that this is going to be the next pollution nightmare. Basically, when plastic rots in the sea, it doesn't just disappear, it disintegrates. In fact it never ever vanishes. It just gets smaller and smaller. So what's the big deal? Well, these microplastics are getting into the fish, and therefore the human food chain. They don't really know the effect of that yet, but it is killing the birds so it's not good.
Apparently, there are five big "gyras" sat in the middle of the major oceans of the world which are where the currents all meet, and they are like swirling municipal rubbish tips. They've got photos such as an albatross who died from eating a cigarette lighter. It's all very sad.
We're not preaching, sat as we are in our plastic boat, drinking plastic coffee from a plastic cup (all paid for on plastic) but if you want to know more check out
www.oceanconservation.org.uk, and in the mean time, don't chuck any plastic into the sea!
And today we got the "kite" out. That's sailor slang for the spinaker or cruising chute in our case. it is a sail specially for light winds and it was a right old palaver putting it up, Eventually on the third attempt we managed it. Just in time for the wind to pick up. So we took it down again.
It's about midnight right now and it's a beautiful full moon; it's almost bright enough to read by.
Keep on trackin'
Ju & Lyn
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