There was a little concern that we were not making the progress we should but once we worked out our speed and distance still to go so long as the Trades keep blowing we will make St Lucia by our original estimated date.
Rod made me jump and shriek today as he surreptitiously put a flying fish on my knee whilst I was at the nav station. They must get washed up in the waves and land stranded on the deck, poor things. They are pretty amazing with their huge fins, we all love watching them shoot out of the top of the waves, they seem to fly out of the water for about 30 seconds. We have also seen lots of shearwater birds, they swoop gracefully skimming the waves…we wonder if there have been more around here as we are quiet near Cape Verde Islands.
We have had a few issues with the GPS dropping out for seconds and it disconnects our autopilot, not alarming, easily correctable but really annoying as it does it so randomly….Rod and Stephen have pondered the issue (us girl crew are feeling a bit spare in the technical discussions) we have even sent an e-mail to Freyja’s marine engineer boyfriend and he replied with ideas.
I sat on the trampoline in the sunshine this morning and listened to my listening books. Lucy and Freyja spent the time between watches sitting and relaxing. This afternoon us girls made a cosy nest in the saloon and watch ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ we ate chocolate nuts, Ferro Roche and Bombay mix (not in that order)…..Stephen ducked in and out, loving it as much as we did. Rod did lots of jobs, good man. He mended the shower door along with one of the door handles in to the bunks and made a cup holder for the helm position….and of course all that pondering.We also had a good clean and tidy today overall, ‘Bimble’ is now sprucer…..A little chaos starts as ‘stuff’ gets left out, its the problems of Cats versus monohull as with the latter you are automatically tidier because everything goes flying about otherwise.
Lunch was prepared by me, a vegetarian aubergine/courgette layered baked dish with lentils, onions, tomatoes, topped with a cheesy sauce…the crew seemed to appreciate it and we sat around the saloon table chatting and having our all crew together social time.
Unfortunately no joke of the day…..can our friends and family PLEASE send us some to our boat e-mail for us to have run dry of jokes this early is not good.
The photo is a sunset I took yesterday whilst sitting on the foredeck….the other is our view from our cosy nest this afternoon.
More news tomorrow, I hope to tell you that we are doing the turn west……..Stephen is keen to do a 200nm in 24hours, we managed 168 in last 24 hrs so we are definitely going to have to crank up the young gal.
So have fun this first day of December.
Best wishes, Nina Ducker on the good ship 'Bimble'