Rhumb - Day 16 - Strange goings on at nightfall

Just after a delightful pork casserole, followed by peaches, pannetone, greek yog and a liberal splash of honey vodka, we began to settle into the evenings watch pattern with Crusher taking the first stint.

Not long into his watch, he was aware of the autohelm sweeping the wheel from side to side, whilst the speed log had stopped working. Just before all this, those of us down below heard a strange swishing sound, a bit like the noise made when doing a ski turn. Clearly something was amiss, so it was 'all hands on deck' to try to work out a solution. As we had seen a lot of seaweed during the day, we deduced that we had passed through a mass of seaweed which had both wrapped itself round the keel and rudder whilst also fouling the log impeller.

Cutting a longish story quite short, the impeller was easy to fix, and the weed was cleared by sweeping the helm from left to right to try to clear the problem. This it did at the second attempt, so it was off back to bed for those off watch.

A bit of excitement to end the day which was really quite uneventful. Progress has been relatively slow with lightish winds bringing our pace down to a bit of a trot which in itself is quite frustrating as we are beginning to get St Lucia in our sights.

On the crew front we can report delight from Dee, Crusher's wife on his recent elevation in rank. Sadly though, this leaves Rhumb Rogerless, but with Tweetiepie Tim now having that funny glint in his eye, yours truly is making himself scarce. I just hope upon hope that Me'Julie is there at the dockside to take him in hand and relieve the pressure when we arrive. Hopefully, we can all hold out until the weekend.

Rhumb over N15.12 W50.56