28th
Another lovely morning, the sun has just come out from behind clouds but will be in and out for a bit judging by the clouds. The wind has come around to the NW and it’s a lot more comfortable although we still have 3m waves which are forecast to grow until the evening before subsiding, we get the odd slap from one and quite a few lurches, mostly whilst cooking or washing up.
Getting things out of the fridge can be tricky, we have three red boxes stacked in the fridge with meat in the bottom then dairy then salady vegetably stuff in the top one. When one wants to get meat out the process is a little like this: open fridge door, think; do I really need some meat, decide that it won’t be too bad, take the top bits off the top box, lift the top box out and put it on some non slip matting uphill of the fridge door, go in to take out the second box, find that lots of things that were piled up on the other side of the fridge have slipped into the second box, remove these bits. The boat will now lurch and the first box will slip away from it’s place and try to fall into the fridge again which necessitates a little mild cursing whilst replacing it, once the dairy box is out it will turn out that there’s nowhere easy to put it so it goes on a slippy bit of the surface and constantly tries to upend itself back into the fridge, one takes out the bacon, or whatever, several other things fall around the box which have to be removed before the dairy box can go back in, followed by the top box. Easy peasy. As we eat our way through the food this should get easier but as I always seem to overcater we’ll probably still have half of it left on arrival at the Azores.
Anyway that rant came because we’ve just had some bacon and scrambled egg for breakfast, jolly good it was too. Some eggs we’d bought in St Kitts had gone off so one has to float test them all before breaking them, just in case but so far thay have all been fine since we left.
The wind just dropped a little and the boom started banging around so I’m just back in from having rigged the preventer. Speed now down to 5 knots but the wind is due to pick up again soon so I don’t think I’ll shake all the reefs out just yet a while, we still have a reefed main with full genoa and Staysail.
We are actually making good progress and if things continue could be in the Azores for around the 8th, earlier than my earliest prediction but we’ve a lot of miles still to cover but I must let Hunter, a friend of Pip’s, know who will probably join for the final leg, as I’d said I’d give him a better ETA Once we were closer, hopefully he’s reading this but I’ll e mail him too.
It’s to be a day of cooking the last of the dog meat style minces today (in the caribbean mince seems to come in one pound frozen lumps looking like  a small black putting inside plastic covers, we used to buy dog food that looked the same).
Slainte Jock, Patrick and Yemaya.