So - first, thanks Malcom and a mile or so to go till we cross Bligh's longboat track. Would've been a Dr from Dublin job in the old days.
Second - best EVER birthday present - WIND and 4.5 knots in the right direction. AGW, we should be a quarter of the way tomorrow.
Thanks for all the birthday/buffday wishes - glad you're back Caroline! - and Hey Carla! AstroAlmostAssymetric! Don't suppose you're left handed as well?
Last night, 1800 - 2100 and 12 -3 probably rate high amongst the most miserable and unpleasant watches I've ever spent and that's saying something. Hugh, you bastard, you wished it on me. May your parts shrivel and your pansies die! We sailed into a small circular system - probably a low, but no gradient - just as it got dark. Grey, fluffy amorphous sky - no shape, no structure except every different softly textured grey had its own ominous black line along its lower edge and everywhere you looked, solid grey/black walls - rain - much softer once you get past the frontier, but soft miserable dripping rain - runs down the main, along the boom, rivers down any crevice in the party gear. Massive lightning flashes all around and there ain't much that's more scary for this little black duck than lightning. And all windless except in little bursts from everywhere, mostly associated with thickening of grey texture. So - unroll furler, get it all sheeted on, re-run main preventers, trim, turn off engine, perhaps 10 minutes of really hard work and humid, sweaty and aforesaid rivers not helping and Berri starts to come alive again. For about 3 minutes and then you feel the first little lift of the headsail luff and the main starts to soften and it's gone. Roll and slat and curse. I guess the examiner is in a dirty mood - so undo it all again, restart the engine....
Jennie, you have to include your email address in the text or ask Speedy to forward it - which he'll probably do when he reads this anyway. Isn't like normal email - everything goes through the squeezer and shredder before it gets sent to us and all the crap that hangs off office emails 'This email is for addressee only...' etc gets assigned to where it should have been in the first place.
Have just transferred remaining diesel from cockpit to tank so we now have floor to stand on again out there in the garden. Yay. The equation - we have about 300 litres left, @ 2 ltrs/hour @ about 4 knots = about 600 miles of motoring. We will have to cross the ITCZ (doldrums) which will be about that distance on its own, so there will have to be some wallowing waiting for wind somewhere up there.
Just crossed Bligh's track.
The Boot Room Birthday Rat.
