Yacht Wishing For The Moon

It seems very strange to be typing the words "26th November" and realising that the next time it's the 26th it will be Boxing Day, when the temperature here is in the 80s, the sky is blue and we are well and truly in the tropics.

We continue to make good progress westwards although the wind has been somewhat lighter for the last 24 hours or so and the boat speed has dropped to between 4 and 7 knots; At the moment be are making about 5 knots. Despite that, we managed just over 130 miles in the 24 hours to noon today. We had the genoa poled out for much of yesterday, replacing it with the reaching spinnaker yesterday afternoon, the working jib all night and the big spinnaker first thing this morning. That added a knot or two to the boat speed and the big red, yellow and green sail looks splendid against the dark blue of the ocean. In fact the colour of the sea is a breathtakingly beautiful blue: I'm not sure if cobalt is the correct colour description, We had a period during which there were big swells, a couple of hundred metres apart, coming from the north and crossing the shorter waves created by the following wind. I should think those swells were about 3 metres high. At present, we have a fairly modest wind of 10 to 12 knots on our starboard quarter and much fewer white horses that when we last wrote.

Once the last watch of the night is over at 0800, we have breakfast and then the salt water shower. This consists of standing on the after deck and pouring buckets of seawater (or having them poured) over heads and bodies, followed by a fresh water hose down, shampoo/soap and finally another fresh water spray. It's all very refreshing and that plus an excellent breakfast really sets one up for the day! It's also the time of day when the cockpit gets swabbed out. Yesterday we managed to lose the bucket over the side when the handle couldn't take the strain of a full bucket of water. That was the second bucket we have had to bid farewell to in such circumstances and we are, I think, now down to the last one, apart from a small one used for galley garbage. Johnny (or do I still call him Butch - he seems somewhat ambivalent about it!) has now secured a line through the bucket itself so that if the handle breaks away we hope the bucket itself may be saved!

Len has produced another sunshade and so we now have two in the cockpit and a real blessing they are. It has become extremely hot in the sun and it would be distinctly uncomfortable without them, Suncreams continue to be used and sunbathing is limited to a few minutes at a time. At night the display of stars becomes more and more magnificent as the waning moon rises later and later. Without the light from the moon the stars have a sharpness and clarity one doesn't see in England.

When we were doing a huge supermarket shop in Gran Canaria, I thought it would be a good idea to buy some salt cod (bacalao) on the grounds that it would be bound to keep and is known to be a bit of a delicacy. Yesterday we decided that we would have fishcakes using some of that cod. i had a vague idea that it needed soaking before being cooked, but I had no idea how long to soak it. Fortunately, Len has a Claudia Roden cookbook on board (together with several others) and that revealed that it should be soaked for 36 hours! in several changes of water so now I'm going to have another go with it for supper this evening. If all goes well it will be salt cod and spinach fishcakes with aioli and peas and then, if they are not too far gone, banana fritters. Claudia R makes plain in her book her own dislike of salted cod, but does acknowledge its popularity throughout the Mediterranean where it is nowadays treated as something of a delicacy. We shall see!! Instead of the cod last evening, we had spaghetti pomodoro.

We still have a leg of lamb in the freezer, together with mince. We were going to barbecue the lamb on board in Mindelo but it was so windy that it was not safe to do so, so it will have to be roasted in the oven. What a hardship! I think that more or less exhausts our supplies of fresh meat and we have now eaten the fresh green vegetables we bought. However, we still have dwindling supplies of fresh fruit and masses of pasta, onions, tomatoes, peppers etc and after that's gone it's into the tinned stuff. So, there's no danger of starving yet. Also, water supplies are holding out, thanks to no little extent to the water-maker which keeps the tanks topped up. We have to recognise, however, that it may break down and so we are not profligate with water. It's very difficult sometimes to remember that we are in mid- Atlantic! We are all very pleased that Len has made another spicy apple cake today, and our taste buds are already active in response to it.

You can see that much of the day revolves around wind, sails, boat speed,and food. One thing I should tell you is that after some deliberation last evening it was decided that we would enter a new time zone and put our clocks back by a further hour. It is therefore now 1530 on board Wishing For The Moon, and 1730 with you. We have no accurate idea whether our time corresponds with international protocols, and although I have often not known what time it is, I have usually known which time zone I'm in!

We estimate that if the winds stay much as they are now we should reach the halfway point later tomorrow evening or early on Thursday morning. That will be quite a milestone!

There seems to be less time for reading than expected. I think none of us has got further than a second book.

The other night, while changing sails, our brave skipper was struck by a flying fish, but no damage done. They fly quite considerable distances - I have seen them travel 30 or 40 metres - and are quite capable of changing direction in mid-flight. A shoal of them in flight is a lovely thing to see.

Hooray, hooray! It's tea time and the spicy apple cake has appeared, so I will have to give it my full attention and that, I'm afraid, means no more blogging today. God willing, our mid-Atlantic correspondent will have more news in a day or so.

Very much love from us all to all of you.