L'Eau Commotion Westabout

6:00pm Tuesday 2nd January 2018 ( UTC-3 ) The quartering reach through the night was fast and reasonably comfortable but as the morning wore on and the seas started to tumble a little we eased off for a more comfortable run with double reefed main and just a small amount of jib showing. The wind went to nothing shortly after lunch so a job that was long in the making was now undertaken. The metho stove has two small burners which are either on or off - no simmering - so to cook rice I bring it to the boil and turn off. After half an hour, repeat. Repeat. This has the effect of using very little methylated spirits so 25 weeks into the voyage I have used just 25 litres so time fill the four 5 litre containers from one of the 20 litre square drums stashed away under the forward v berths. How many drums? Well each time I visited Toys for Boys ( a.k.a. Bunnings ) I would check to see if there were any spare 20 litre drums, recalling the times spent in Southern latitudes huddled over a hot water bottle and being thankful t hat I then had plenty of spare fuel for the stove. When I set out I realised I had 5 of these drums with the aforementioned 25 litres. A complete overkill? Yes - well maybe. After a fair bit of rearranging of all the junk which had ended up in the fcsl I got to the first drum. In the bouncing around it had inverted and loosened the screw top so there was only 5 litres remaining. Decant. Next drum, though upright had managed to loosen its cap so only four litres. Decant. Fortunately the next drum was full and so all the small containers are now filled, I have one other drum I know to be full and a further one so far forward under so many sails I didn't bother to check as from the time I started this necessary chore the wind had completely died with a remainder of a slop throwing things this way and that which to be polite was unpleasant. It is all grey and gloomy outside as dusk slowly overtakes us but a breeze strong enough to overcome the considerable slop is sending us nicely along on course.