Friday Update

Current Location: about 230 miles from the Canaries



Blogger: Jenny



We're still chugging along under engine with pretty much no wind (4knots) which is a bit annoying but means that it's pretty calm and Marcus is feeling much better. Having to write this below deck as the sun is too bright on the computer screen (life's hard).



Firstly an update on yesterday's jobs: I washed and chronicled the process in photos for a later blog when we can upload pictures, Marcus washed and changed his pants (relief all round), mum washed but didn't find the hot chocolate (more on that later) and dad achieved all of his objectives. All in all a productive day.



We were talking this morning about the passage of time on the boat. Time is broken down into watches of two hours so that you have two hours on watch then six hours off. If you're on watch during the day you need to be on deck, nominally keeping a look out, checking the AIS for other ships and checking George or Wanda (the autopilots) are keeping us on track, but everyone tends to be around, doing jobs or napping, reading or chatting. At night it's more formal, generally you're on your own unless someone else can't sleep and you're essentially scanning a pitch black sea against a pitch black sky for any boats that might be around.



During the night, we rotate between beds. As there's always one person awake, there are three "births" to choose from and we each have our favourite:

- The port three-quarter birth (aka the invalid bed) - Marcus

- The starboard pilot birth - mum

- The aft cabin - dad and Jenny



At the end of your watch there will be one empty bed and you can either go in there or arrange in advance for someone to swap. For example, last night, mum took over from me so I went in the pilot birth, but Marcus and I had arranged that he'd have the invalid bed back after his watch so when he got up I moved into that bed and when dad got up to take over from Marcus I moved into the cabin leaving the invalid bed free!! Mum originally thought we'd all have our own designated beds with individual sheet sleeping bags but this is just not possible. We just crash where we can.



Time passes in a very strange way on the boat. It gets light about 8.30am and people tend to emerge for breakfast around the start of the 10am watch (me this morning). The day flies past with one watch each taking us to 6pm and the start of preparations for night - the sun sets about 9pm. The nights can sometimes really drag if you're tired and sleepy and keeping your eyes open can be a major issue. Last night I did 40 minutes of yoga (stopping every 5 minutes or so to scan the pitch black horizon) which really helped, dad sometimes listens to talking books and Marcus listened to the World Football Phone In. You can't read because if you had a light you'd lose your night vision.



Yesterday was quite eventful. Marcus, mum and I were just chatting on deck when a huge dolphin leapt from the water about 10m from the boat. It was so high in the air - we reckon about 10ft - and sploshed back in before repeating again. We were all squarking so dad rushed up from his nap but he'd missed it and there was just some commotion and some more leaping from other dolphins a little way off. We're not sure what they were doing but it was amazing.



In other news, George, the autopilot packed in and dad had to rewire it into the long wire powering the old deck GPS. In the process he managed to unwire the GPS (mum was not impressed) but fixed it all in the end. Marcus thinks that the insulation-taped-wiring would contravene building regs! We also set up the new GPS and spent ages trying to work out why the two were not showing the same track. It turned out that for years, the old GPS had been set to magnetic north giving us a 5 degree difference. Dad pointed out that it was surprising they'd even managed to make it to anywhere in the past as we plot using true north.



We found the new hot chocolate this morning, but mum had bought one which needs to be made with hot milk - not ideal on a rocky boat with no microwave! In the end we experimented with milk powder and made a very passable alternative. This will complicate midnight drink making slightly which is already tricky with red lights only; when pouring boiling water into red cups you have no idea how full it is! Most tricky is red, pink grapefruit juice, into a red mug, using a red light.



Today so far we've cleared out the fruit net for rotten items, cleaned the floors and toilet, dad's checked the state of the diesel and we've decided we're having cauliflower cheese for tea.



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