SERENITY NOW

Day 43. (Sunday April 30) 15+ knots, 2m swell, sunny Welcome to week seven.. Slapped a smile on my face this morning. I spent the first part of this journey telling Chez ‘no one except you can make you happy’ or some such similar waffle.. and I’ve spent the rest of the time not heeding those words at all. So, today: smile on face.. it helps that the wind is finally with us, the sun is shining and we’ve got less than 400 miles to go. Made about 100 nms yesterday - hard to say exactly as Navionics has a habit of crashing, and losing all the tracking detail. Hoping to make slightly further today - we’re going along at a steady 5 at the moment (10:30am) I’m sacrificing another lure to Neptune today.. I should say: I’m back trying to catch a fish again.. but I think being a realist on that front is fair enough after the amount of success I’ve had thus far. As with the fresh food, I’m now also scraping the very bottom of the barrel of the tackle box - oh well, fingers crossed for a nice mahi...

Day 36. (Sunday April 23) 10-12 knots, sunny, not flapping, 1-2m swell. Well it’s nice to start week 6 the right way: 5 knots gliding along under sail, the water sparkling from the sun in the cloudless blue sky. Chez has gone all Lieutenant Dan / Bambi today… her legs don’t work. We’ve instigated an exercise regime to hopefully rectify the situation: 3 times round the table every time you come up to the cockpit. Took the rods in shortly after sunset. I was surprised to find a shiny silver scabbard fish hanging on to Ballyhoo John’s lure. Not sure how long it had been there - it wasn’t large enough to make the reel squeal, less than a meter or possibly just too streamlined. Not being sure if it’s edible, I happily returned it to the deep, still very much alive. Lots of nasty teeth to avoid as I got the hook out. This is the same type of fish as the one I’d ‘caught’ in Trinidad. I say ‘caught’ as that one actually jumped into the tender overnight whilst we were anchored there in Chaguara...

Day 29 (Sunday April 16) Sunny, 15 knots of wind 2/3m swell following This morning has me throwing gang signs (a W on the left and five fingers on the right) and saying ‘Week Five’ in the style of Ali G saying ‘West Side’. I’m possibly going slightly mad. Today is the first day of our fifth week at sea.. also known as Pumpkin and Onion week. There will be other things in our diet, but those two are now the core ingredients - the last of our fresh food. Numbers wise - we’ve yet again improved on our previous score: 135 nms for the last 24hours at 5.6 Knots. Pleasing. Saved the lives of two plump flying fish last night, despite their best efforts to jump out of my hand and remain on deck. Another 4 of their smelly brethren were not so lucky, and were cleared away this morning. Not much going on today, did catch up on some sleep. I know this diary is seemingly dotted with nap after nap, but to have a good solid uninterrupted sleep is a rarity. Woke this evening full of beans, made pasta p...

Day 22 (April 9, Easter Sunday) Good morning! Happy Easter: extra ration of chocolate for the crew tonight! Well, here’s hoping that week 4 trumps week 3 in all respects - it wasn’t our best seven days just gone. Bizarrely on the stroke of midnight last night, the wind came up - nothing fierce by any means, but it’s been enough to keep us moving in the right direction with sails alone since. Chez has recently suggested that we may have been cursed - while that seems somewhat unlikely, if we were, hopefully midnight last night was when that particular hex was lifted! Since then we have sailed, albeit at a fairly sedate pace. As I rose this morning, Chez headed off for a break - and I’m hoping will soon return refreshed and revitalised. It looks like we’re around half way to the Marquesas, days wise, still a way to go before we reach that mark distance wise, but I’ll keep you updated. In lovely news overnight, Laura, Martin’s daughter gave birth to Lennie Michael Kosta: Welcome to the wo...