Monday 14 April 2008

McQ Do we need to appoint a Snickers Liaison Officer?

What a disaster- we are halfway through our entire snickers supply for the whole trip and this is only, day 5 or something... What a terrible terrible oversight... we both like lime juice, we both like cheese, mustard, dark chocolate,snakes etc all this got taken into account!! but we never thought to mention to each other that we both like snickers quite a lot and now look whats happened?? What are we going to do??? If anyone would like to commandeer a Mars confectionary ship crossing the Pacific, that would be much obliged and we can rendevous at a mutually convenient time and location. Any help on this matter would be much appreciated.

The Donk is off, finally. Whilst its nice to have a bit of cockpit back (that was previously devoted to the big black diesel tank) it probably wasn't considered that we would be motoring this much this early on in the trip and it might prove in our interests not to consume too much just now... though Berri's diet is beginning to work and she is starting to feel a wee bit more spritely and less heffalumpy!!!! I was watching the wind come and go this afternoon and everytime it looked set to stay I would go sort the foredeck and pole out and come back ready for some headsail and the wind would die off completely and so I would go forward and put everything away. This happened about 3 times and I could feel the wind gods chuckling to themselves up in the sky as I yo-yo'ed about!! Eventually, thought, thats it, put the headsail up anyway and turned the engine off- peace at last!!!

There is still a fair swell form the SE, which can be a wee bit disconcerting, when the sea state is fairly calm on top of that. A big swell means that somewhere something is brewing and with the grib files (apparently the rule of grib here is: direction accurate, but double the strength!!) showing nearly 30knots tomorrow, we could be in for a wild ole' ride!!!

Oh, I nearly forgot, I nearly forgot- we saw three whales this afternoon. I have seen one or two whales ion my time, from various boats and distances but from the deck of wee Berri these three were enormous. Absolutely mesmerisingly gargantuan, just off our starboard beam heading south. We don't have our RCG (TLA for remedial cetation guide) but we think they might have been fin whales. We watched for a while, certainly I was in awe of being so close to these amazing creatures that look so big and unwieldly stuck on a beach or hanging from a museum roof but just so incredibly beautiful and graceful in the (their) ocean. Reminding us, too, just how small and insignificant we really are in this world...

Wind is just starting to fill in and I can feel the momentum picking up, might be time for a drive... Finished the first of the trilogy of four... am now an expert on vogons and their pooetry and thoroughly looking forward to seeing Kimbra on the dock woith Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters waiting for us... cool!!!! As most of my friends will know when I pick up a good book I don't tend to do anything else sensible (like sleep) until I am finished it, so a drive will be a good distraction!!! and then I can head off to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe after dinner this evening, as it were...

Lots of love
McQ
x