If you've been, or maybe still are a dinghy sailor you will no doubt have experienced the wildly exhilarating fun of spotting a strong gust of wind coming your way and, at just the right moment, easing sheets and bearing away onto a screaming reach. On our dinghies, it was usually Anne doing the screaming right enough.

The downside to having all that fun though was that as the gust faded, you'd be faced with the prospect of hardening in the sheets and flogging back upwind to recover all the ground you’d just whoooo hooo’d your way down.

Well, its now Saturday morning, we’re just two days out and Bermuda is nearly four hundred miles behind us. Three hundred and eighty to be exact, missing the magic two hundred mile days by a fraction.

For every mile, it’s been a Whoooo Hoooo kind of sail. Full main, Code 0 and flying along on a reach, wind just aft the beam. Tempting fate, I'm going to note that amazingly, the GRIB forecast for the coming week is more of the same. Whooo hoooo. None of that bashing upwind nonsense and none of the stress of trying to sail dead downwind, as close to the gybe as you dare, preventer on to stop you getting a serious dunt on the head and struggling all day to keep the headsail filled. Just day after day of skooshing along, averaging about nine knots under clear blue and starlit skies.

It gets a bit sportier in a few days time. Sportier for a few days but, after some serious negotiations, pleadings and finally threats, we’ll just tuck in a reef or two and, oddly, we’ll not go any slower, eliciting another I Told You So moment

The biggest challenge right now is that we left Bermuda having set up our Watt&Sea hydro generator with the nine knot prop and we’re at its limit now. One high speed surf and it sheds its blades like leaves on an autumnal gale blown tree.

Before it gets sporty, we need to change up to the really WHOOOO HOOO sixteen knot prop. This involves having me hung off the back of the boat in my life jacket and harness, back step awash and me up to my pants in the ocean. Anne puts the boat up into the wind to slow us down such that, at just the right moment, the pressure comes off and I can pull up the stupid thing. Anne bears off to full speed while I fiddle about with Allen bolts and switch props, all the while my knobbly knees getting a much needed rinsing. Not to mention the pants. We then need to scrub off the speed again so that I can dangle over the oggin and, at just the right moment, get the stupid thing back in its bracket, in the water and locked down in place.

A few days ago I got so frustrated with this daft design that I sent Watt&Sea a drawing of how it should be built but as yet, no response nor royalties.