Body clocks are amazing things. They regulate all the functions of the body from the simple, when should it be light or dark; to the more complicated, what to eat and when; to the super complicated, when to go on watch and when it'll finish so you can return once again to slumberland. The body clocks of all onboard Ruffian have now been truly messed up. Fiona can now only stay awake in 2 hour stretches, Dominique is ready (apparently) to go at all hours and Iain finds himself craving sweets and chocolate at all hours of the day (no difference there then).

Our body clocks have got all confused as we have been woken every couple of hours to either go on watch, change our sail plan or simply manage the boat. Some watch changes were more successful than others. Sometimes the next person in the system would simply magically appear from the inky dark night, on time, dressed and ready to rock and roll on deck. Sometimes however things were a little more difficult. One night for example Dominique was woken, he then got dressed, checked all was OK on deck, nipped to the heads, put on his offshore trousers and finally his life jacket. Then instead of heading upstairs to brave the elements he simply went back to bed! His body clock clearly needed winding and resetting.

During the same evening, Iain was woken for his watch, had a conversation with the Dominique whom he was to relieve, then proceeded to chat with Fiona for a further 5 mins and promptly fell asleep again. On been woken again 10 mins later, he claimed to have no memory at all of any of the previous conversations!

Whilst on deck the primary activity apart from that if driving the boat has been fishing. Our new lure, Mr Green Squiddy, has proved to be most successful and has been deployed at every opportunity. He's caught Tuna and Mahi Mahi within minutes of being deployed but we are afraid to impart the sad news that he is with us no more. On the last evening of the passage we chucked him over the back and again he had a bite, a big bite, in fact a really big bite. Mr Green Squiddy and line were literally snapped up by a big monster that had taken a fancy to him. We hope that he enjoys his new home and he'll be sadly missed.

With the loss of Mr Green Squiddy the flying fish in the ocean must have felt sorry for us. We had seen flying fish for a long time, always flying from the boat, or other big predators in the water, but on this occasion the navigation software inside one of these little critters went wrong and pow! Dominique was joined by one for dinner and he had the choice of either putting him back or adding him to his bowl of pasta.

With 850 miles of low stress sailing behind us it was time to raise the stress levels to new highs and make landfall. The pilot books we have onboard say that a night entrance to Palmeira on Sal is 'very challenging', there are many unlit marks and these islands are world renowned for their non maintenance of their lights. This means that you'll probably see no dangers and the dangers you can see are highly questionable. With the stress levels rising Fiona studied the electronic charts, the paper charts and all the pilot books we had to hand and still the stress levels went up. She then got the 'Man of the Match award' for looking at the chart corrections that we'd been organised enough to download but not organised enough to read. Here we found the gems of information we needed. There were new lights, we could see them and we knew we'd be safe.

Once we'd entered Palmeira we thought that we'd completed the most difficult bit of the voyage, but boy were we in for a shock. We now had to find a spot, between anchored boats, oil pipelines and big patches of flat rock, to get the anchor to set. Time and time again the anchor went 'Clunk' on the bottom finding more and more rock and not holding the boat safe or still. After the 4th attempt we finally had some form of holding and we could congratulate ourselves on the safe completion of our biggest ocean passage on Ruffian to date.

The sailing goes on day and night. There is no just 'Chucking the hook down.' out here when you want to have a bit of a rest.


The mean fishing team. Dominique, Iain and the magic, soon to be deceased, Mr Green Squiddy.


It's not all play play play. Dominique works his image magic in Photoshop.


Ahhhh tradewind sailing. Genoa away, kite up, dialling down.


With the obligatory green bananas deployed.


It's getting hot hot hot. Time to hide from the sun.


Unless you is like a proper gansta. 'Yo yo yo. I'm on a boat.'


It's not all easy sailing. Someone has to inspect the front end of the boat.


The Cape Verde dolphins had heard about our send off from Las Palmas and tried to show up their Canaries counterparts by giving us an equally good display.


The master at work and Dominique taking some photographs!!!!!!


Larry was feeling sleepy after having been on watch for 7 days.


This little chap was jealous of our nightly dinner party and tried to gate crash the event.