14:57.5N 052:19.6W
Tune of the day: "Call Me Irresponsible",
Michael Buble.
Day 16. After the trauma of realising that we
had run out of rum last night, our misery continued as we went into a night of
light winds which brought our boat speed crashing down. This morning we
therefore set about the task of trying to regain the lost ground.
At 0900 hours we launched Melinda, the largest of our spinnaker
kites. Melinda is a ridiculously oversized sail that really shouldn't
be ever let out of the bag. However, faced with light winds again this
morning and needing to do something dramatic to improve our boat speed, we
launched her. Apart from a couple of moments of drama, both involving an
intense physical relationship between Melinda and the forestay, she has been
flying all day and, this evening with the wind picking up, she is giving us a
terrific turn of speed. We are going to fly her all night, which is
borderline madness, but we need to make up those lost miles. With less
than 500 miles to go, and a difficult sailing angle all the way into St. Lucia,
this is where we need to turn up the heat....
On other matters, its been a fairly uneventful day. Mike has a wash,
which was pleasing for all of us. Ben, on mother watch, spent the day
producing miracles in the galley out of our rapidly dwindling food
supplies. Jags fixed Beryl's drive unit which had managed to
work itself loose and was threatening to turn into a dangerous object on
board. Minkey became the star of the day by managing to clear all the
seaweed off the rudders which has been slowing us down, albeit he did it quite
by accident when a nasty squall forced him into a gibe, followed by a tack
(in effect a 360 degree turn of the boat) at 0600 hours this morning.
By mid afternoon he was sufficiently de-traumatised from this nautical aerobic
event to start talking again and acknowledge the praise the rest of us were
offering him.
We'll do another LP agony aunt tomorrow, but in the meantime, we are
grateful to all those of you who have provided suggestions for Mike's
marathon training schedule. Today, he made a positive start by doing
4 partial pressups in the cockpit. Mike strongly argued that, in
combination, this totals 1 full press up and thus represents a solid base
in his training schedule. We all agreed that, at this rate of
progress, the 26.2 mile London Marathon will be little more
than a breeze for Mike when he crosses the start line in 3 months
time....
Daily Stats:
Max
Boat speed = 9.0 kts
Number of spinnakers used = 1, but what a
beast...
Maximum Gust = 20 kts
Number of Flying Fish = A little one
committed suicide and was found on the foredeck this morning.
Number of Birds = 1, which arrived from nowhere and followed
us for 2 hours hunting flying fish.
Amount of Rain = Enough to desalinate the
North Atlantic ocean, all of which fell during Minkey's night
watch...
Advent calendar highlight = currently in the
fridge trying to reconstitute the chocolate treats into something
solid
Jags, Minkey, Ben and
Mike