Thursday 5th July

At Sea
6 00.427 S
124 37.361 W (at Midnight)

Yet again after a roaring night the wind died at sun rise and we began wallowing and rolling. The reef came out of the main in an attempt to up the speed, all it really achieved was greater flapping and banging when the pressure came off the sail. Y Not told us that they had had a couple of hours of light wind during the night – I guess their light wind found us this morning. We took turns in going to sleep and watching over George; during my turn to watch I played with the jib, furling it in and out, winching it on then cracking the sheets in an effort to get the thing to fly – what a waste of time! It took until 15.00hrs for the wind to finally come around enough to fill the sails and even then they would flap when the gusts dropped. No doubt you will be thinking how nice to have all that time to do whatever you want, it’s not quite that way as there are things that have to be done like running the water maker and generator to top up the batteries, preparing and cooking meals and trying to sleep whenever you can to make up for all that you have lost. I have found that there is never enough time to do anything other than read a couple of chapters of a book in the day time hours – so much for the idea of watching movies and doing some sewing! I mentioned a couple of days ago about the creaks and groans that the boat has developed on this trip, I failed to mention that both Gerry and I have developed some serious aches and pains, nothing that a nice Jacuzzi, massage and a stiff rummy thing won’t fix! We have put the aches and pains down to the constant bracing that we have to do to move around the boat, we even have to wedge ourselves into the bed and brace against the movement at night so there really is no letting up on the old muscles and joints. I have found the worse times are always when I’m in the galley cooking, the boat will lurch and I, along with the knives, pots, food and anything I haven’t tied down tend to go flying across the salon. I have some spectacular bruises to show for it! I am very careful about things like hot water, fat and the chopping knives – they are all potentially lethal when the boat is lurching but heck you should see the damage a flying potato can cause. Anyway we reached the 2 week mark at 10.00hrs this morning and I am glad to say that our trip meter shows we now have less than 1000 miles to go, hopefully just one more week at sea. Yet again we saw nothing today – all the dolphins have disappeared and the whales are conspicuous by their absence, talking to the other boats we have found that Timella and us are the only ones to have seen another boat since the 23rd June – that is just so incredible and just goes to show how immense the ocean is. Our day ended the same way as all the others for the last 2 weeks – dinner at sunset followed by night watches. The first watch is always Gerry’s and when I came out on deck after trying to sleep the wind was gusting up to 20 knots – pretty similar to the previous night. We put the reef in the main and furled away most of the jib and ran at 7+ knots all through the night without any problems.