Day 9

All fine here. A slightly more laid back day today as it is pretty scuffy and everyone is tired after a bumpy night. Some exciting developments though. Firstly, we saw a bird! It was a White Tropics Bird and it was just beautiful (google it). It stayed with us for about 30 minutes over breakfast and was great to watch, skimming the waves and hovering next to the boat. Jack and Fizzy - we managed not to catch it!



We're also chomping through the miles. A new 24 hour record of 132 miles brings us near to both the 1000-mile mark and the 2000-mile to go mark. We've been under double-reefed main and very slightly-reefed genoa today in 20-25 knot winds and are steaming along at over 6 knots. The ride is NOT comfy today as the waves are big and across our westerly path.



We've also had some squalls with the wind getting up to nearly 30 knots and often a swing of 20 degrees from it's usual direction. Nothing too bad so far so hopefully it'll stay that way.



We have been asked what we do with the "poo tissue" we create so we thought we'd give a bit of a run down on waste disposal on board, with help from our "Waste Disposal Consultant" (or "Rubbish Man"), Marcus, who is in charge of bins:



Human waste - our toilet has a holding tank in which we can store this whilst in an anchorage or alike, but currently our wee and "ocean motions" go straight into the sea - sorry dolphins. We can't put paper down the loo.

Organic waste - food waste, paper, cardboard and the afore-mentioned "poo tissue" gets thrown overboard as it will all degrade quickly in the water. We call this "feeding the dolphins".

Recycleables - these are carefully washed and crushed and Marcus stores them away in a large bag to be disposed of when we reach the Caribbean

Other "true" rubbish - non-organic, non-recycleable - this gets squished and stored in double bin bags, again for disposal in the Caribbean



Other questions from our readers:



Have you caught any fish?

No not yet, we will start fishing when there is space in the fridge to receive some fish. This may be tomorrow. When fishing, we also have to stop The Toad (the electricity generator) so we can't fish all the time like we have done before. JAsk - Marcus' Tenacious D impression may be more successful with a line in the water.



Do you have a Cunningham?

WTF?! No. Does your racing yacht have solar panels? This caused great hilarity. Good question.



Following Loz's sea-sick 11 (Mark vom Bommel, Puke Chadwick), there have been a number of rounds of footballer puns. Highlights include ice-cream flavours (Scott Minto-choc-chip) and sailing words (Peter Odem-dinghy).



Thanks for the poems Phil and JAsk.



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