Time Bandit - Time Bandit & The Three Bears

37 41N
40 15W
11:00 25th May

We don't know how we sailed 2700 miles to the Caribbean with 5 people on board as, with just two of us we keep bumping into each other, mostly when, like Baby Bear one of us is wandering around looking for the softest, quietest bed.

"I think I'll try the forward cabin". "No, it's too noisy with the staysail moving"

"I think I'll try the saloon" "No, its too bright during the day"....... and on it goes, usually while the other is doing something in what ends up being the "best" cabin. As for the porridge.........

We had a better day yesterday in that we sailed. No engine and enough breeze for a steady 4 knots. As the afternoon wore on, the boats 60 - 120 miles behind were reporting 18 - 20 knots. We had been sailing with the genoa poled out and the gennaker flying to leeward sheeted through the end of the boom but with no mainsail. As the reports of increasing wind came through on the evening net our consideration as to whether to be bold and fly the gennaker all nifght were ditched, as was it.

The wind eventually filled but not until nearly daybreak so we would have got away with it, and made an extra few miles.

There's some weather coming at us from "oop north" or Labrador to be precise so we're pulling the stops out to get us to Peter's Sport Bar in Horta before it arrives. Our eta is late afternoon or evening on the 28th. I'm not sure what time the bar closes but that's the incentive. (More steam McPhail).

The last 48 hours has seen a lot more sealife with dolphins and porpoises making regular visits. They turn up at all times, you can hear their puff in the dark as the expel air going past. We also had what I initially thpought was a waterspout yesterday but turned out to be the "thar she blows" of what must have been a very, very big whale. We're a bit more wary of these beasts now that they've done for one of our number.

So, today, we're bowling along on a broad reach, in a will-we-won't-we about hoisting the gennaker. It's a steady 18 knots just now so we're at the top end and right now, especially as one of the bears is in the softest, quietest bed, caution (sense) prevails and I'll just sit back with a book or.... maybe put an eye splice in that bit of rope....


S&A