Timshel - Cape Verde to St Lucia Day 9

Sailing in the afternoon seemed a little slow so we put up the cruising chute - suddenly things were much more exciting. At least the refurbished snuffer worked OK, but our normal guide of 15 kts true max wind for this sail is probably valid, with 18 or so it just got too interesting so we reverted to poled out yankee with relief. We may yet need the light weather sail so best not to blow it quite yet. Anyway wind got up by evening so we were making max speed (7 kts or so) even in the correct direction for once, we do find it difficult to go exactly down wind under self steering. So good progress overnight continued in the morning. I was convinced that the black clouds that gathered in the evening would give us some rain and was ready with shampoo towel and bucket - but nothing we managed to miss all the showers. Gave up and washed my hair in salt water in the cockpit, seemed to work OK, after all I've washed in snow outside an alpine hut before while on a ski trip. In all the (cruising) books the guys tip buckets of sea water over their heads - do they bail them up directly? Got mine from the salt water pump in the galley, reckon both I and the bucket would be overboard had I tried scooping up water at the speed we were going. Noticed on the SSB net that Liam from Odyssey referred to the main ARC as ARC minus - perfectly logical as our smaller more select group is ARC plus!