Footnotes from Water Music

During last night we had an unexpected visitor turn up in the forward heads - which along with the remaining flying fish and squid on deck was unceremoniously returned to the deep.

As dawn broke, it brought with it some welcome rain and cloud, accompanied by a temporary loss of wind that allowed us to catch up on some domestic matters. It also required some adjustments to the sails. Given that Water Music has now completed 7100 Nautical Miles since leaving Lanzarote, sail changing manoeuvres pass without incident but dont always happen at the speed you might expect from a top notch racing crew in the solent. Faced with having almost no wind and three reefs in the main, the skipper commented that perhaps we should see how the new wind settled down before any drastic action. That seemed like a good idea and so Brain asked how long he was thinking and replied "sometime tomorrow afternoon..."

The rain passed and we soon dried off in time for the noon position check which showed that we have now completed our first 1000 miles of this leg in 6 days. We now have just under 2000Nm to run to the Marquesas. We followed this news with croque monsieur with home made bread and pimiento di padron for lunch. The afternoon routine of siestas and even some exercise (hand steering in quite boisterous conditions) followed. that gave George (the autopilot some rest). Sitting in the cockpit we are watching the banana stork on the backstay ripen and will, no doubt, use them in some banana bread as soon as they all ripen at exactly the same time and we get left wondering what to do with them all at once.

As the day marches on we will all start to gather around the radio for the nightly episode of listen with Norm. More on that tomorrow.