At last a relatively peaceful sea after 2.00 a.m. So much so that we all managed some much needed sleep.
Revived and ready for action after a team pow wow we decided to move the spinny pole and put away the gib. The wind was a mere 10 knots and good direction for the cruising chute. Let’s play! 2 and a half hours later we were back with the gib and pole format and the chute was safely back in its snuffer after the wind had hit 22 knots whilst trying to hoist the darned thing. Fortunately crew and skipper survived the episode with no thanks from Murphy!

I did however manage to make pancakes and syrup this morning (not up to Kay’s standard though). Mind you given all we had done before breakfast a scabby horse would have fitted the bill just as well.

Today will be the last of the fresh meals we brought. the freezer has done us really well (thanks Ronnie) However the water and air temperatures are now so high that it is a huge drain on battery power. So we will use it as a cool box and hope that it keeps the vacum packed stuff for a few more days yet.

We have covered 1000 miles at 1.00 a.m. this morning (only 1600+ to go)

We have been asked for some info by some children about how we work things like food etc on board. So for the benefit of Mrs Ritchie’s P7 and my own pupils at Wallace here is how it has been working.

We brought fresh fruit and vegetables which we bought at the local market. We had to be sure they had not been refrigerated before hand as they would not keep long if they had. This turned out to be true. I had chosen clean, washed carrots and within 3 days they were rotten and had to go overboard. I had also bought green bananas and some yellow ones. We were told we had to wash the bananas as they had lots of beasties is the skins. These were soaked in water on the quayside for a while and then dried and stored in a dark cupboard. I made the mistake of putting them beside the green tomatoes. What I had forgotten was that bananas let of a gas as they ripen , this has an adverse effect on other fruits and veg stored beside them. So yup you guessed it – quite a lot of over ripe bananas and a few oranges went over the side as well. The remainder that were going of was turned into a juicy fruit salad which we ate for tea that night. Since then everything else has been fine.

Eggs need to be stored in a safe place where they won’t get rattled and move around. They also need to be turned every day or so. We have so far lost more to breakages and spillages than because they are blown. We stored them in cardboard holders and wrapped them up in cling film which we then had to spray with cockroach spray so that if there were cockroach eggs in the cardboard we wouldn’t have an infestation half way across the ocean. Hopefully they will last us into our last week of the passage and we will use them for meals.

RUBBISH: In our modern world it is a problem – on the crossing it is the same. Where would we store it? How much would we generate?

We knew that it was unwise to take any cardboard on board for fear of cockroaches so when we got back from the supermarket with the big grocery shopping we stripped everything of its outer packaging
( had to write on the wrap what was inside) . By doing this we had already reduced the amount of rubbish we would have quite considerably.

Tins, glass, paper and card can go overboard as it is biodegradeable. Plastic is the biggest concern as it is so bad for the sea life. We have a pair of very strong shears (scissors) and to date have cut up all the plastic into small sized pieces and kept it in a bag. This includes the water bottles.

To date we have got a half full black bag of rubbish. We sprayed the inside of it with some antiseptic spray and this is keeping the smells down.