Shurly Shome Mishtake? as Dear Bill would have said.
Did any of you spot that there were two consecutive Day 8 Blogs?
Probably not if you just delete them without reading them, and by the way it is
possible to get your system to delete these pieces for you automatically without
you needing to bother! What worries the Skipper and crew too (maybe),
is that if your Editor is muddling up simple numbers like that, what on earth is
he doing to the navigation? Only slightly less worrying is that the
accounts and stores are looked after by Norfy, so they should be
OK. And I have just discovered that some of my e-mails, including these
Blogs, have not reached their destinations, so if any of you are missing either
some of these (and who can tell if the numbers are all to cock) or any other
replies to your mails, then please let the Skipper know.
It is probably the worry of all this that has turned parts of the
Skipper's rather short straggly beard grey in places. Apart from that it
has been a difficult day for both Navigator and the various Helmspersons.
Our destination is now directly down-wind of us. This is much better than
it being directly up-wind, of course, but no sailing boat likes running directly
before the wind. It's slow, and it is also very difficult to decide which
is the best tack to be on. For the first time this leg, we have the full
mainsail up, and we are goose-winging, with the mainsail and mizzen out to
Starboard (which is only preferable in the very unlikely event of us getting
involved with another yacht in a Port/Starboard dispute) and the genoa poled out
to port. The wind has moderated, but after a wonderful sunny day yesterday
the rain is back this morning. Woe, and just as we had managed to get most
of our clothes and the (inside of the) boat dry. But we continue to make
reasonable progress, and there is around 6 hundred miles left to get to
Mauritius. We are still hoping to arrive sometime on 14th October.
All well with us, and best wishes to
everyone,
James, Norfy (Chris) and Alex