Before I start my ramblings, I have now had a few emails wanting to know where exactly we are. You can answer your own question by clicking the "Shiptrak" link on the right of this page and should see a map of the world with our track represented in a series of red dots. Each dot is our noon (local noon) position. If you now click on a dot, it will give you the date and time, physical location (lat & long) and a few other details and a short comment. Hope it works for you as I do post our daily positions as soon as possible after they are recorded.

Right, that now out the way, we passed the island of Madeira last night on our course of 066 degrees true. It was well lit and the moon was full, so we were able to grasp the size of the island and the fact that there are a hell of a lot of people living there. We were even able to witness a pretty large aircraft landing at the airport, which is located right on the shore front. The other notable item is that there was not a breath of wind and the sea was like glass. This was expected and has continued all day today, with a slight breeze from the north expected later this evening.

We now have about 450 nautical miles to go to our next waypoint, which is at the western side of the Straits of Gibraltar. Doing the calculations, we should arrive there during the early hours of Saturday morning if the wind and weather plays its part as predicted by the weather folk. We will then spend the morning going through the straits and most likely stop off on the Spanish side of Gibraltar Bay to fill our water tanks and take on further diesel to get us to our destination.

At the moment we are under motor only (and have been for the past 24 hours), which is not too bad. Dave is at the helm trying not to run over the turtles we are seeing, whilst Josh is starting our dinner of "pap 'n wors". Well, not actually "pap" but mashed potato with boerewors topped with a pepper and mushroom sauce. It is the last pack of our boerewors so we will wave that part of our South African traditional food a farewell as we enjoy it. Dave, a Canadian, has grown to like it as well and was quite disappointed that it was the last pack. Whilst I type the report, Mathys is going through his exercise routine, doing push-ups. Ah well, everybody for their own!

Break, Break - dinner now consumed - lick da lips maan!

As you will gather, not much is happening aboard at the moment. So, from Dave (chief coffee maker), Josh (gambling specialist), Mathys (fitness wanabee) and myself, John (idiot in charge), we send you greetings until the next blog post.