Our eighth day at sea and into our third day of motoring, sitting as we are right on top of a high pressure system. But there is a glimmer of hope. A new low is developing and we know that a south westerly air stream is forecast. We are impatient for it to arrive. Last night at dusk a band of thick grey cloud sat on the horizon straight ahead of us. I raced towards it but could not get under it. It must have been moving at the same speed. Daylight brought a welcome and unwelcome gift. The whole of the foredeck is splattered with squid ink, impossible to remove with ordinary liquid soaps.

The "mess"
We will have to let nature, sea and sun do its work for us. Judging by the area covered it must have been very large, they can grow to enormous lengths. The antidote to that was a visitation from two schools of dolphins. From a mile away we saw them coming leaping high out of the water and then in sea so calm we watched their acrobatics several metres down below the surface. I am now fully recovered having had a couple of very low days indeed. All I wanted was to be tucked up in bed and goodness only knows how I would have coped in weather of any kind, but I got through it and have come out the other side smiling like the sunshine that beats down on us today. In a burst of new found energy and activity I made a fresh batch of chocolate biscuit crunch, then treated David to his favourite breakfast of bacon, eggy bread and tomatoes. Along with our sundowners and nibbles, the nutty box of night time treats, I think of these things as great morale boosters but they will more likely be great weight boosters. But we always seem to be so hungry. Sailing in bad weather can be very hard work and we must burn up the calories but why we have such hearty appetites when we are motoring upon a windless ocean I do not know. David is devouring his books again, always a sure sign that we are settled into our sea going routine.
Last night the propagation on the Southbound 11's SSB net was very poor and for the first half hour we had great difficulty hearing Herb. Because of that he has put the time forward another two hours. We have always noticed that when trying to send emails via the SSB it was infinitely more successful during the hours of darkness so we expect that to be the case when we next tune in.