Day 27 of the Return Trip
This collaborative team blog is brought to you by Ciao
Bella Airlines...
Let's start with yesterday. Brennan forgot to mention a
morning incident in very poor visibility. Him and Gina were on watch when a
humming was heard.
It wasn't the engine or the prop spinning, but a massive
container ship - 200m away! It appeared out of the rainy mist like a ghost
ship. Luckily it wasn't on collision
course, but it was an eye opener.
The breeze took until 19:00 to fill in from the North.
Until then we were motoring with only the mainsail up, desperately trying to
maintain some kind of appreciable average speed. Despite it's inefficiencies,
the team continues to refer to our Yanmar 20HP engine (the donkey/kadonkadonk)
as the tumble drier. And we got some long use out of it yesterday.
In the late afternoon, we got our first bit of sunshine
in ages! Frowns were instantly turned upside down, and there was a mad scramble
to get clothes, mattresses and sleeping bags out to dry. Hillbrow Hotel deluxe!
Next thing the shirts were off, people were showering on
the sugar-scoop and basking as if they'd never see sun again. Given the past
week it wasn't an unlikely eventuality. Dave's inventory of dry clothes went
from a pair of undies and a singular sock to a full wardrobe in the space of 45
minutes.
The sunshine only lasted an hour before it clouded over
again, but it was enough to make us all happy. And as the sun vanished so did
all the goods hanging all around the guard-rail, boom, spinnaker pole,
spreaders, winches, pulpit, etc. The cloud cover that followed brought with it
our breeze. It started from the NNE, so we hoisted the #1 genoa. At sunset it
had broadened enough for the code 0, but the breeze was building fast, so we
held off on it for a few hours. At 22:00 we made the change, and our hopes of
another 200 miler were sparked again.
We had a fast night, which got faster in the morning when
we executed a "slick peel" ( to quote Ric D) to Tallulah, our big
Zebra spinnaker.
The sun rejoined us today. So our rainy:sunny day ratio
now sits at 19:8. And our stoke:man ratio is up to 10:1. I think you will agree
that this is a much more favourable ratio compared to the dismal 0.02:1 we had
before the sun appeared.
We were also rejoined by a couple of wandering Albies (albatrosses). These mighty birds
looked like dinosaurs. Wing-span for days ek sê. They float on the air with
wing-tips almost touching water. What a pleasure to be graced by such company.
A crew member who has chosen to remain anonymous has even promised to name his
first child Albert Ross Robinson. Even if it's a girl.
This morning's breakfast was interesting. They say that
necessity is the mother of all invention, which Brennan proved when baking some
fresh bread.
We were a short on flour, so we cut it (drug-dealer slang
for supplemented) with FutureLife! The resulting bread was outstanding. Bren
has named his brain-child 'FutureLoaf'.
Raf got schneid out of one piece of FutureLoaf, which
spelled controversy.
We think the sandwitch theif struck again, right under
our noses. We even dedicated labelled lunch-boxes (/conflict-prevention
boxes/anti-oorlog
boxes) to prevent this kind of thing.
Things might get slightly more tense in this department
as we are down to our last luxurious food pack prepared by Kax. After today we
are eating dry rice-cakes and 2 minute noodles.
In other news, Ric washed a pot today. We are thrilled.
We are shunting along, probably going to change to
Florence (the smaller Zebra kite). We have introduced a new decimal numerical
system for our speed based on our ETA. For instance, most of last night we were
doing seven-point-Monday. This morning we were doing eight-point-sunday, or
eight-point-sunday-lunch (correct to 2 decimal places). Certain parties on the
boat are pushing for ten-point-friday-tigertigerwithhobson.
In tomorrow's update you can expect: the results of our
night's run, our new midday position, a description of our bunks, and Gina's
horniman.
Ciao!
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