Isabel - Day 5

Thursday 12 Noon 26/11/2105
23 23 00 N 30 43 47 W - 145 miles daily run - distance to St Lucia 1800

Attached "Rock Star" picture of Skipper James on the bow last night. It
would have been nice to send you a picture of Peter (again) today dressed in
just his mincy Gingham shorts, Mrs G don't worry I have checked re suntan
and he assures me he has creamed himself all over.

Well today is the ARC brochure picture day with sunshine, puffy clouds (not
sure what Chris Tibbs calls them) and 10 to 15 knots of breeze pushing us
along nicely. We have the "Bird" up, a full size genneker. Yesterday it went
up at a about 1600hrs in 20 kts of wind which of course then increased to
gusting 30 kts plus giving us a stonking sail at 10 knots + but come
darkness the fun had to stop so chaps on the foredeck hauled on the top down
furler line and ............err ........ well.........it all worked
beautifully and wound itself away and was dropped back in the bag.

With a lovely day all on board is quiet, generator is just a hummm making
some more water - we are carrying 750 to 1000 litres so (no world news
here) if anyone knows of any African city in drought let us know, be pleased
to help. We also have a full tank of 980 litres of diesel plus another
forward tank with 397 litres .............. and five 20 litre cans. SORC
friends that know me please understand I have suggested jettisoning all but
the request has been refused - as we are racing empty tanks and a few
bottles of water from Tesco should cover it in my book! Isabel's a big girl
weighing in at just shy of 30 tonnes inc Nespresso machine and Krupps
Cappuccino maker.

Meal planning is improving with everyone, other than me, putting together
some tasty grub and I wash up, sometimes. We have a lot of food which is
great but most comprises of parts of a more complicated kit to make a "meal"
- Plum sauce, tarragon, cous cous mediano, olive oil, bits of chicken,
steak, sausages, prawns, salmon, lamb, bake at home ciabatta, cranberry
sauce and plastic bottles labelled "crepes" annoyingly none of these and
many more can be eaten direct from the pack. Sadly for moi who cannot cook
this has proved a challenge but triumphs occur -yogurts I can do
unsupervised, fruit has been in abundance (won't last much longer in this
heat) and I aced it this morning on finding some sliced bread that I
toasted in the toaster - seriously - and had with butter and Nutella -
Eureka!

Mike