4 men in a boat
05 January 2019 | En route towards Cape Verde
stephen foot
Good morning - preceding blogs give a pen picture of our world, but to further detail the rigors of life aboard Water an average 24 hours requires 3 hours formal work comprising one night watch, the remaining 21 made up of sleep (quite a lot in Nick's case), eating, drinking, idle banter, fishing, fixing stiff and the odd sail change, the rest we just fritter away. We have our own ships time, having agreed to move back an hour yesterday to match our daily regime to daylight breakfasts and early suppers with the ongoing goal of arriving in Antigua in sync with local time.
Last nights star-studded watches were blissfully uneventful with a fairly calm sea light and occasionally very light winds which took progress down to a slow 2 knots at times. Water Music exudes her own calm when it is like this, the warm glow of the deck level red lighting down below adding to the peace - and the attraction of a sneaky mug of tea whilst the self steering whirs away. The last watch was from 05.00 - 08.00, the shooting stars stopped at around 06:00, the remainder switched off one by one as darkness turned into light with sun up just before 08.00. Breakfast was limited to muesli (Waitrose of course) , amuse bouche of bridge rolls and marmalade and a pot of coffee (too strong for the wingeing Aussie) - we stopped at that due to the excesses of last night. Fishing, gentle bickering and reading are now in full swing with cold beer in prospect followed by lunch. Who knows what the afternoon holds, but the forecast indicates siestas followed by more idle chat, reading and fishing , tea, cake (with thanks to Kate, Grace and Claire Sowry) and our last stew of the trip (probably).
Its a tough life under our skipper (who it has to said is beginning to look a little lived in), but there have been no stern words or court martials - yet...
Thats all
Water Music (gently trundling on).