Logged on 2 December 04 at 1200

Position – 164 16.23N 37.46W

After several days without communications from Makathea, Sea Biscuit is now back within VHF range of Makathea and can pass on their news and position. It seems that lady luck continues to evade Makathea. Their drive belt on the auto-pilot, Candice, has broken yet again and the boys are back on hand-steering and are looking forward to their remaining 55 hours of helming each.

Their generator is also broken, meaning they can’t charge the laptop, and are currently unable to send their position reports daily. Sea Biscuit will continue to do this on their behalf while we are in VHF range.

Their water rations are now down to only 100 litres of water, but perhaps more importantly they have run out of beer, and are only left with the 0.59 Euro wine, although they do have this in red, white and rose.

Mike has managed to crack a hatch window while falling on it, and also sustained a minor thumb injury whilst dropping the spinnaker. It is said to be well on the mend now. But despite all this, they sound very optimistic and Rob even treated us to an absolutely storming performance of ‘Flower of Scotland’ on the bagpipes via VHF ch.77, and then apparently turned rather purple and very hot following the exertion and had to lie down and have seawater tipped over him by Mike for a while afterwards.

The crew of Sea Biscuit who only just managed to retain dry eyes (despite none of us being Scottish) were very grateful for this. Makathea will continue to write their log each day and will send their full report at the end of the trip.