Yee-haw, we’re over half-way!
We passed this exciting milestone at about 6am this morning, and are today
celebrating with fish and chips for lunch (the chips part of things being ever
so slightly fraught with danger in this rolly swell, but Nick seems to be
managing with only a minimal number of oil burns) and steak for dinner, complete
with a (small) glass of red.
However, even though we’re half-way in terms of miles, we think we’re
probably over half-way in terms of days spent at sea, our rationale being that
we’ve used so little diesel so far that we’re not going to be shy about putting
the engine on to keep our speed up if the winds drop off again.
But no need to worry about that just yet- we’re sailing along at 7 knots
with a couple of reefs in at the moment, which is about as fast as we can hope
for. The sea state is ever so slightly uncomfortable, but at this point we’re
used to the constant roll. On days 1-3, when we had quite a bit of movement of
the boat, we could barely rouse ourselves to heat up a casserole I’d
pre-prepared. Now Nick is fileting and flouring fish, cooking up chips,
simmering ratatouille and whipping up a lemon mayo.
Well, I promised to keep you up to date with the baking situation, and so I
shall: the bread machine is back in business and earning back every penny we
spent on her. A couple of days ago we had the freshest fish sandwiches possibly
in the history of the universe. I took the finished bread out- it smelled
heavenly!- and, as we were contemplating fillings, the fishing reel suddenly
spun. We’d caught a dorado! We barely paused to kill the thing before chucking
it in the frying pan. Half an hour later, we were chomping on fish finger
sandwiches! Delicious!
Continuing the food theme, we also celebrated the 1st of December with
mince pies, which we washed down with a cup of tea: a surreal experience in the
middle of the Atlantic! Much more used to that particular Christmassy activity
in front of our fireplace in London, bemoaning the cold and the fact that it’s
dark at 3pm.
Okay, okay, I’ll move on to the actual sailing. Hmm, what to say? This
ocean crossing thing is pretty easy, to be honest (knock on wood, obviously!).
We point the boat in roughly the direction we want to go- keeping the wind at
about 160- and, depending on conditions and energy levels, either hoist the code
zero (okay, only done that once), Parasailor, or goose-wing the main and jib.
What else do you want to know!? Before we left I was told that if you can cross
the English Channel, you can cross the Atlantic- advice I received sceptically,
I admit- but it’s pretty much true so far! Nick’s an ocean sailing convert, John
and Neil are pretty relaxed from what I can tell (there’s a hell of a lot of
lying around in the sun reading books) and even I am feeling unexpectedly
serene. It is truly beautiful out here. Even though we’re counting down the
miles to Saint Lucia now (my God, this time next week we’ll almost be there!), I
have to say, we’re enjoying this passage far more than I’d anticipated and I
daresay we’ll be kind of sorry that it’s over.
Nick, Terysa, Neil and John