Day 13 Wed 28 April

Sometimes I write to you as it is happening, sometimes after the event. Or both. Day 13 is behind us, like the swirling miles left in the wake, like all things that are past, and gone. What memories of it do I retain?

Fast! We were moving fast. On the port tack, heading just west of south, bustling along, fussing with self importance our bow wave was, saying: here we come, sssstand aside please! The sound of it at speed is like a wave breaking on a beach, or like the roar of the crowd from a stadium half a mile away ("The crowd goes wild!").A Beautiful sunrise, and later the sun shone warmly, before it clouded over dropping the watts inputting the batteries from the solar panels. As fast as 7 ½ knots we went, quite often. At 7.9 knots I call out to the boat "you can DO it, Richard!" (a line from Mel Brooks' comedy movie high Anxiety)craving that extra one-tenth of a knot! I want 8.(At the time of writing this, I got it!)

Cutting a zigzag track downwind, we now gybe the boat once more onto the starboard tack, planning to go all day and all night on this westerly course. Keeping within a corridor 50 miles either side of the rhumb line (course to waypoint), and also avoiding a hazard - a 200 yard long piece of 2" thick rope reported floating at a position touching our corridor.

So all day the boat steers herself, her motion (if you can imagine!) like being on a train with soft rubbery springs - swaying, leaping, ceaseless. Sometimes we catch up on sleep, sometimes read, or discuss whether it is time for lunch yet, or report our position or chat on the SSB radio, keep a look out, talk, plot our position on the chart, write emails, send and receive emails, receive weather forecasts, sleep, read, and so on. I finished Johnny Cash The Autobiography, enjoyed it very much; I was tearily moved at times, he tells a good story.

And, at evening time, a moonrise that fooled Adrienne; she goes up the companionway, looks out, and cries "OOH!! -A CRUISE SHIP!!" It was actually the moon rising, made to look rectangular by being sandwiched between the horizon and low cloud. I could see it that way too.

No flying fish on deck this morning, after 10 of them were discovered on deck the day before. They must have found out what was causing it!

Stay safe. Stay happy!

PS By the way, neither of us gets seasick. Very grateful for that, I am. It wasn't always that way, at least for me.