Friday 10th October
STARRY, STARRY
NIGHT!
Wind
dropped a bit during the night and we were wallowing a little, but picked up
during the day and we have been making 6.5 to 8 knots since. It is now 3.30 am
Saturday and we are now 703 nm from Cocos, which should take just over 4 days.
Position as of now is 10.13 South and 108.39 West and 176 miles from Christmas
Island. It looks as though we will pass it in the dark, unless we slow down and
run with Malcy's idea of getting out the dinghy on the leeward side photograph
us off the Island and make the picture into Xmas
cards!
Spent
most of this morning asleep having finished a watch at 8.30. Made some
bruschetta for lunch had another doze, made some fruit salad and started
preparing tonight?s offering of chicken chilli and basil. I seem to be getting
slower as each day I spend 2 to 3 hours in the galley just for dinner. In
between I made a few phone calls and bought some more Iridium time (the Sat
phone - also used for emails).
Its
neither easy nor an exact science provisioning the boat for a passage. I was
working on the basis that after Darwin we wouldn?t be able to buy much till
Mauritius. That was a wrong assumption as Carrefour in Bali was extremely well
stocked and prices were OK except for wine (50% more than at home). The first
thing I did in Darwin (as always) is to see what meats are available and after
preparing them by taking all the fat, rubbish and packaging off (which saves
about 30% space and saves preparation time later) and cram the maximum into the
freezer. I particularly stocked up on filet steak as this is often not easily
obtainable, whereas chicken is. I was going to try some kangaroo, which I had on
my Blue Mountain trip, but bottled the idea!
On a
daily basis it is then a case off rotating the meats and trying to use up the
fresh ingredients into a recipe, which you can't always pre-determine until you
know what's available in the shops. We had the added complication of not
carrying longer lasting fruit and veg, such as potatoes, onions, apples and
oranges as we understood these had to be ditched because of quarantine regs
before entering Cocos. However it seems they will be bonded instead. With
everything we have on board I guess we could keep going for at least 3
months!
We
have sailed mostly on WARC with 5 or 6 people on board, so 4 does make things a
lot easier catering wise, but on this trip aside from plain cooked steak and
roast beef, I am trying for my own and everyone else's interest to do a
different recipe every night. It may not be possible over the next 20 plus days,
but we will see!
Enough of this stuff! There is no obligation to read it,
but if you do it's a bit of an insight into how things run on the boat. I will
expand on other aspects soon in the absence of anything else to report. So in
the meantime its back on deck to warm winds, a starry night, an IPOD and maybe
Don McClean's Vincent!