Under a Thousand!

Well we all waited for sundowners last night until the miles to run clicked over from the thousand to 999 and celebrated with a drink, rum and orange juice for myself and Alastair and a red wine for Stephen.

This was followed by dinner of garlic fried chicken in oatmeal, leaks and Skirlie for which we must thank Jessica and Katharine, Skirlie is new to me but is essentially savoury porridge and was fine. (This is my take on it: Fry an onion, add oatmeal and stock and salt and pepper and cook, I added milk at the end because Katharine told me to but suspect it’s not needed.)

If things keep rattling away the way that they seem to be then we could be on course for arriving on Monday, as katharine had said several days ago.

Alastair lost patience with his stubble  and shaved it off a couple of days ago so now it’s only Stephen who has a beard or the beginings of one anyway.

A few gentle squalls passed through this morning, nothing more than 28 kts but with slight wind shifts, we’ve brought the genoa over to port and back to starboard again  and are currently goose winged again doing about 8 kts to the West, most satisfactory.

We’re having to run the engine, normally twice a night to keep the batteries going, during the day the solar panels keep up and charge the batteries a little, but not that much so when night comes and the sun potters beneath the horizion we have to keep n eye on the voltages.

I was on the 2100 to 2359 watch last night and so (as we’re doing 3 on 6 off) also on the dawn watch this morning of 06-0900. I managed to set my alarm on my telephone but omitted to change the time to shp’s time so ended up being shouted by Alastair just after 2100.

The wind instrument, having been fairly reliable up to now, decided to stop work last night for a few hours before starting again, I hope it was a one off and not a deterioration in it’s usefulness.

Yesterday’s Noon run was 157 with 1039 to go and todays will be about 152 run with 891 to go.

We have a tinned haggis for tomorrow night and we have ode to a haggis aboard within a bargain books anthology of british verse, one of my favourite books to have at sea, so along with some malt Burns night will not go unmarked.

There is a small spot of rust on the Haggis tin, Luckily Stephen allowed it through quality control when throwing lots of food away before I arrived.

All the best for now.

Jock and the boys.