Freedom - Blog 6 - Friday 24 November 2023

Editor Stuart Aston

After I complained to my best mate yesterday about dobbing me in to all of you who read this blog about my very small recycle feu pa, his reply was “well you do it then” so here we go.
I often Stand in the cockpit (clipped on of course), and look around a complete 360 degrees , all you can see is water, horizon and sky. At certain times of the day this allows you to experience some very special sunrises and sunsets and I have been lucky enough over the last couple of days to experience two amazing sunsets. Nigel tried to do a time laps on his phone, but unfortunately this didn’t quite have the desired effect, two amazing sunrises, I cannot remember every seeing the sun rise up from the horizon and this morning I watched the moon set below the horizon, special moments you only get when you are in the middle of an ocean.
Today feels like the first real day of trade wind sailing, 14-20 knots of wind directly behind us, medium swell running and often getting 10knots when the boat surfs down the waves. As you probably know from previous blogs we have been heading south west almost directly towards the Cape Verdi islands to try and circumnavigate the high pressure that sits directly on the rhumb line from Gran Canaria to St Lucia. At 0300 this morning Chris , Nigel and I gybed the boat and spinnaker and headed more towards our final destination, we are only a few days away from a full moon so we almost gybed the spinnaker by moon light as it was giving us so much light, but we decided to put the deck lights on for safety reasons.
Daily life on board Freedom continues, showers, breakfast, the Whitaker brothers doing their daily exercise routines on the cabin floor of the boat the scientific experiment (we signed up for in Las Palmas - water samples taken, tested and results recorded twice daily) downloading the latest weather files to try and plot our route so as to stay in the wind, and listening to Chris, Nigel Ian and Simon put the world to rights!
We are lucky on Freedom that Chris and Ian installed a water maker, it’s an amazing bit of kit that processes 500ltrs of salt water to produce 50ltrs of drinking water an hour, which allows all on board to shower daily if they wish.
The one time that we all get to sit together is evening meal time, Simon produced a tremendous mushroom and pasta dish last night under the watchful eye of Ian, but I have to make special mention to Ian who has been producing all the meals (apart from last nights), the food appears through the companion way steps, and I think, how on earth has he managed that (remember the boat is constantly moving up, down and side to side).
After last nights meal it was decided we needed to have a game of spoof (using our hands and not coins) to decide who had to deal with a delicate house keeping matter , luckily I escaped the dreaded job , I will let skipper tell you about that in a further blog if he sees fit. Then followed a game of cheat, a card game I had not come across before, which we played by moon light and the red light on Nigel’s head torch.
Some people on these trips want to be completely ‘off grid’, I, however, prefer to stay in contact with our girls Faye, Zoe and Beth. Beth told me about a little Garmin device on which I can send and receive text messages via satellite which, I have been using to text them now and again.
I will leave you with a message I received last night from eldest daughter Faye and her son, our grandson Dougie, “Dougie said night night to the moon tonight dad, as we know you can see the moon too”

Best wishes to you all from all aboard Freedom