Day 5 – Wednesday

It’s hard to imagine living like this on a permanent basis! The yacht is constantly rocking sideways and alternative forward to back with the occasional exaggerated movement throwing you and whatever is loose around the boat. Sleeping last night with the sideways roll was extremely difficult for Kevin and myself in the front cabins. You are constantly thrown from one side to the other. I woke up with aching elbow joints as a result of holding yourself in position against the roll all night. At least I have had a workout. I seem to be settling into a routine of getting up at first light.

We had travelled steadily and did our best distance over the last 24 hours. We are still in the winds but need to turn North which we did early evening. After breakfast we decided to fly the spinnaker and all was well until we decided we wanted to put the spinnaker sheet through a block at the end of our mainsheet. Mark the skip scurried along the main sail pole to the end to install the block and put the sheet through it. A task not for the faint hearted or the heavier crew as you hang out over the ocean. Unfortunately the boat jibed and the spinnaker got twisted around the genoa. Trying to get it untwisted end up tearing the spinnaker and we had to get it down quickly. We brought out the genoa again and tried to repair the spinnaker but with no luck. We eventually set the boat up in goose wing fashion which is with one sail either side like a bird. We have continued to sail like for the rest the day and the evening. We did lose some speed and it will set us back in our attempt to catch up places.

We still have not seen any other yachts since our encounter with Genieve 2 two days ago. The first sign of other human life we saw was in the evening when a large vessel passed us in the dark quite far off our starboard.

Shaun and Jean made lamb knuckle stew for dinner and it went down like a treat.

We are all settling into the boat but there is not quite routine yet aboard but I am sure that will come over the next few days. Task for tomorrow – fix the spinnaker. Till then….