Firefly - Eating well, mid South Atlantic

Today is Saturday 28th of January 2017 and we are about one third of the way to Salvador Brazil with 1250 miles to go.

The passage is very enjoyable at present out here despite relatively light winds. The gennaker continues
pulling us along very well. As described in the previous blog, it is set up in a special way (like a symmetrical kite) - a bit of a fiddle setting the furler on the spinnaker
pole but it does allow us to run very deep, in fact we can make a better course than we can when goose winged. This morning we gybed in order to head further north to stay in the forecast wind. It took a while but we modified the set up to ‘mark 2’ - we can now furl the gennaker while it is out on the spinnaker pole.

Yesterday we did 173 miles 0600 to 0600 and covered the most distance of all the WARC
yachts - not a bad mileage in wind averaging 15 knots from dead astern.

We are SSB radio net controller today and had a good role call this morning hearing
everyone clearly and will call again this evening at 1800. We were particularly pleased to hear that on board Trillium they had caught a big Mahi Mahi. Their freezer nor their water maker were working when they left St Helena so it was great to hear they now have some fresh food.

It made us think about our ‘feeding times’, usually the social highlight of any passage and on board Firefly we have things ‘highly tuned’ - Peter has a special diet (wheat and dairy free) so he won’t be putting on quite as much weight. Paul and Gareth are trying to make up for what he is missing and normally have the following.....

Muesli during our early morning individual watch
Toast and marmalade when we have our morning battery charge about 0930
Lunch, normally a tomato salad with salami, ham and cheese and a generous dollop of Mrs Balls Chaka Laka sauce (the tomatoes we bought in St Helena are superb and we have a fridge full – there was not many other veggies we could find)
Afternoon tea, no apple pie on this trip so we have resorted to a tin of fruit with cold custard from a carton
Pre dinner, a small can of beer and nuts or crisps
Supper, our main meal of the day, we had a superb mousaka last night cooked by Peter

Plus we normally manage a few biscuits and squares of chocolate along the way!

Paul, Gareth and Pete