Skye Blue - The Skye Blue Penultimate Countdown

Hi all,

So hopefully this will be our second last post. It's been a challenging few days in many ways...

-Conversation is running dry - in fact we recently had a 30 minute conversation about nail clipper design, something about a 'self-retaining-storage-compartment` to prevent loose nails landing on deck.

-Our route to the finish line has been less than straight through necessity - due to lack of wind. But it did lead this writer to wonder when the lower case letter 'h' started to appear as a trail on the chart plotter, was the skipper trying to spell out the word 'help'?!? But I've been reliably informed this is more the 'mark of Zorro´ with all the tacking and gybing required - zigging and zagging our way home.

-The constant anticipation of squalls bringing variable winds and rain and the often repeated actions of - rain jacket on / rain jacket off and deck cushions out / deck cushions away. Rinse and repeat if you will.

-Some light relief had been had in weird and wonderful world of boat inventions. We marvelled at the 'deck-shower-o-matic 2000', which involved the perforation of an empty water bottle attached to a length of rope to aid with sea water dispensing. We also, after 14 days of non-use appreciated the rudimentary wooden step made pre-departure for the helm deck, which counters the lean required when the boat is at a 30 degrees to the water, sailing upwind. Note all such inventions are copyrighted by the Skye Blue Crew. But please do get in touch to negotiate royalty payments.

And finally to the ludicrous conversation (clearly delirium has set in) amongst a section of the crew about the possibility of tying the YellowBrick tracker device (used to monitor our race position) to a European Swallow and sending it St Lucia bound, in the hope of improving our recorded finish time. Clearly the tracker´s weight to bird ratio would be all wrong. But to reference Monty Python and the Holy Grail - we'd clearly need to find an African Swallow to assist in such a devilish scheme.

Ok, better get back to the high brow and intellectually stimulating debates on board. Until next time and our much anticipated final day.

Your Skye Blue Crew
Ross

PS. Actually the sailing the last day or so has been great. Said Shipwright Ross now takes everything Skipper tells him about "unusual for an Atlantic crossing" as "usual for an Atlantic crossing". Have enjoyed sailing close hauled for the last few days!