No position report sent today

Well it had to happen sooner or later. Yesterday a Firefly special Merit Award was duly bestowed upon or chief Beard and skipper, Stewart, for gallantry above and beyond the call of duty. Having discovered a logjam in the heads outlet pipe, forcing the bucket back into operation, B1 dived into the smelly pipes locker with little or no thought for his recently consumed lunch. It wasn’t long before a bearded chain gang was formed to remove the used chicken parts curry from the bowels of the boat, bypassing the normal exit pipe and bringing the full flexibility of the cut-down olive oil container into use.

No nancy Marigolds for our leader – he just piles in there barehanded, wiping them on the nearest tea towel on his way out past the galley. Suddenly the chile supper doesn’t look so inviting, and neither do the carefully dried tea mugs! Immediate beer rations were invoked once the entire boat had been sluiced with copious gallons of bleach, thoughtfully stockpiled in Antigua.

It was a quite night, with the wind dropping slowly by daybreak as we creep closer to the centre of the well established Azores high. The engine was started for charging and pizza making at 0700 this morning, but is now our only driving source as the surrounding ocean turns to glass. Skipper Stew, having languished in the Caribbean for the last six months, has finally agreed to remove his cosy new Gill thermals and taken the rug from his poor, goose-pimpled legs. With a cloudless sky and 32 degree sun burning down on us, he has finally admitted he’s ‘warmed up a little now’. Needless to say, Beard 2 and 3, being of hardier nature and trained to carry out boat tests in the English Channel in January, had already removed their T-shirts by dawn and are into the second coating of sun-slop already.

Despite our now rather slow progress, we have made such good time over the last week that we should still be on schedule for arrival in Horta sometime mid next week. With the halfway mark passed during the night, and enough diesel stocks on board to motor for four days if necessary, we should be able to track our way through the centre of this high and pick up some fresher westerlies the other side, providing the centre of the high doesn’t track with us, of course! Until tomorrow then…