Date/time Thursday 1200

Position 23 51 92 N 20 05 81 W

If the first couple of days were eventful then the past couple have been a little less.

We have spent the greater time bobbing about at between 0 and 3 kts all leaping for joy if we hit the dizzy heights of 6kts! We have made sedate progress south and at one stage on Tuesday there was the threat of a serious collision…with Africa! We have now turned slightly more to the west and have this morning found some wind and currently cruise at 7 kts .

In our earlier report we made mention to pirates… well Miss Charlotte was apparently approached by a vessel waving torches about off the coast of Africa which the skipper made the decision to ignore. This set us thinking – we needed a plan in the event of approach. It was decided that the skipper would: a) screw on his wooden leg and that the first mate Borthwick would blow up the parrot and they would wave the kitchen knives about their heads shouting ‘Ooo Ahrr let’s be ‘aving you’ – this approach was not considered that effective against AK47’s so we went for plan b) the skipper would play his violin and the crew would all sing in an attempt to deter any attempt of boarding! As you can see we have had far too much time to think.

We have seen a large pod of dolphins that joined us at Azure which was a pleasure and this morning we had a pod of about 10 Pilot Whales 50 yards off the port side for a few moments.

News of other vessels well in the absence of Neighbours and Eastenders well we have been listening to a degree of flirtation between the skipper of Venus and the skipper of Minerva on the radio. We were also joined by Speranza whom we had passed very close by a couple of hours earlier whom asked us if we had a part for a generator which sadly we didn’t – all we could do was give them some info on the charts around Cape Verde Islands so that they could make safe landfall and get it sorted there – and off they headed.

Finally we also heard a one sided radio conversation detailing that a double-handed boat in the racing division wade a ‘Mayday’ that was down graded to a ‘Pan Pan’ as they were taking in considerable amounts of water from they didn’t know where – even with my very limited sailing knowledge I feel confident to make the call that this is not good! We hope that they are all well.

Must go as I have to bake bread and there is huge excitement on deck as we have just hooked our first fish – I will let you know if we land it!

Until Saturday

Alec Lochore