Mike wakes me up at 4am ready for my next watch, but I have managed quite a few hours of sleep. Samantha behaves herself of this one – no further messing about. We average about 8 knots out of winds of 15-22 knots but occasionally Jeannius reaches 9 knots.
I sit and watch the sun as she rises over the horizon. It’s a beautiful morning. As I gaze at the lightening sky, a song comes on my MP3 player – “What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong. It is so fitting but as usual when it comes on unexpectedly, it makes me cry because it reminds me so much of my late father. Dad would have been so full of mixed emotions about me doing this. On one hand he would have worried himself sick and would probably have tried to talk me out of it, but would also been very proud of his little girl and would probably have bored everyone to death telling them about what I am doing.
The next song to come on is the theme tune from the movie “Titanic”. Sometimes I think there is a shuffle devil of MP3 players who sets out to mess with your head!!
I eat yesterday’s left over dinner for breakfast, cold, while Mike and Jim gaze at it with disgust while they eat their cereal. My stomach does not have a clock and I can eat anything at any time.
There are no other boats around at all this morning, although at noon, David from Voyageur starts to call everyone in turn on the SSB radio to take their noon positions. We can hear him clearly but when it comes to our turn to transmit, he cannot hear us. We manage to contact another boat via the SSB’s VHF channel and they relay our position for us. Mike tries to fathom out the problem but like most manuals, his is written in some unintelligible language that only people who understand the things in the first place have any chance of understanding!
I spend some time in the afternoon preparing food for the freezer. I bought some chillies and fresh herbs from the market the other day and am a bit worried by the size of the chillies as the smaller they are, the stronger they are, and these are tiny.
There are no clouds today, just blue skies and blue sea and again, lots of flying fish. One landed in our cockpit when it flew over accidently – Mike throws him back as they are very smelly things! Although we have the rod out, we are sailing too fast to catch anything we want, and anything that keep up with us, we really don’t want to land! Joe and his crew on Brown Eyed Girl catch a 26 lb barracuda today. Rather them than us!
Jim cooks dinner then prepares to take the first watch. I am doing just the one tonight; 1am to 4am.
Our midday position is: 13 deg 20 min N, 63 deg 22 min W
Distance so far: 144 nautical miles
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