Walkabout - Walkabout - The Onset of Scurvy?? - Day11 Mindelo to Grenada

N12:47.1 W50:15.2

It looks like we will arrive in Grenada with a boat full of food - think we may have over catered. We have lockers full of tins, and have so far used just one. We are still using fresh or frozen food and ingredients, which is great. But there is a crisis looming on the nutrition horizon…

We have eaten our last tangerine!!! You may recall that we had rather over purchased on that front in Las Palmas. We have been eating them as fast as possible, to make sure we don’t have to throw any away. But now they are gone, and life on board is not the same. We have used our last apple. There are 3 oranges and one mango left out of all our fresh fruit. Looks like rationing will be required to avoid the onset of scurvy before we arrive in Grenada!!

Yesterday was spent acclimatising to the new normal of this Atlantic crossing - bigger swells, higher winds, big gusts and squalls. As such we sailed very conservatively, as we didn’t want to get caught out by gusts or squalls. For the fist time on this trip we went through a whole 24 hours without changing our sail set up. As it turned out, this has certainly cost us some speed and distance, as most of the day we had 14-17 knots, and 3 reefs in the main is a bit under powered. But it was good to sail conservatively, and not risk putting the boat under unnecessary stress. There is still a long way to go.

The forecast seems to have settled down a bit now, so we will probably shake a reef or 2 out today, and drop back again overnight. The wind picked up overnight - Traci’s watch had a lot of 20-22 knots and we were doing a consistent 9 knots for an hour or so. Further demonstrating the benefit of reefing early, rather than battling up get one in when over-pressed in the dark.

Today the clocks will go back again by one hour, so ‘Walkabout Time’ will be UTC-3. We have slightly adjusted the original plan, so that we don’t end up with sunset at 1730 ‘Walkabout Time’, and dinner isn’t in the dark.

Talking of dinner - last night we had meatballs with pasta and pesto. All very nice, and very much back to eating with just a fork. Some people will be aware that I like to ensure we have sufficient ‘emergency rations’ on board - meals we can eat when the weather means it is impossible to cook, or the stove breaks down, or we have eaten everything else. So before we left Plymouth, one of my last Amazon purchases was 24 ‘boil in the bag’ meals - really nice ones by ‘Look What We Found’. Just the job - not just in an emergency, but good regular eating as well. Trouble is that they consist of 12 packets of meatballs and 12 chicken casserole - so not much choice. Anyway, the meatballs we had last night were not these ones!! We had even more in the fridge. So we still have all the ‘emergency rations’, and it looks very unlikely that we will be needing them.

Still no news from the Fishing Club - apart from a tale of lost or damaged gear. Today could be the day ...

Thanks again for those of you who have sent messages - Joan in particular - a steady flow of chirps from the phone overnight is fantastic!

At this stage we hope to be in Grenada Saturday sometime, hopefully during daylight hours enjoying our arrival Rum Punch!