Chocolate-Gate and the wobble of motoring

Atlantic Sunset

Day 16 Friday 26^th January 2018

Nightly Chocoloate restriction lifted

Position at noon: 41°11.88 North, 22°36.04 West

Morning all

Another jolly day on the good ship Challenger 2 still motoring, latest weather is still no wind until the channel, only slight change is that instead of us getting a right spanking it now looks as though we may have a pleasant 20 – 25 knots fine reach…that will be nice J . Fuel consumption is still good with loads to spare.

Plan remains the same to plod on in the hope that winds may change in our favour. Slight disappointment among crew that we are not getting the strong winds and large swell that I had promised them, I really should know better than to promise any sort of weather J. Other than that all is well  a certain amount of consolation is being taken in the form of cakes, biscuits, food generally, coupled with the now expected silliness and banter we are still a very happy boat, the nightly restriction on chocolate bars / treats has now been lifted.

When the wind final turns up we will progress from very happy to yippee, woo woo and wow sort of happy.

Regards

Neil, Skipper

Happy Birthday Ian

The wind has most certainly dried up, the sea state decidedly smooth although in places large rolling peaks of swell pass under us heading west or, north west. They are impressive – in the valleys you can’t see over the waves and on the peaks we’re high above and can see for miles.

Today is Ian’s birthday – happy birthday! Ian’s is the 3^rd of 4 birthdays we’ll have amongst the crew during this trip

Fishing and fishing boats

sSurprisingly to me we’ve just passed two fishing boats – from where? We don’t know… does anyone communicate with each other out here? The anonymity is surprising at this distance from land: the Azores are 350nm to the east and Portugal perhaps 600 nm west. Our only radio contact so far on the trip has been with Oz, a racing yacht which we tracked to Horta – they’d spotted our storm sail from a few miles and were worried enough to radio us in case we knew something they didn’t.

Our fishing lines our out now and I did, momentarily, think of asking our skipper if we could radio our companions today for some tips on catching these elusive tuna. We persevere with the angling and I continue in the belief that our efforts will pay off at some point (please!).

The weather is getting cooler everyday now and slowly more layers are added to my outfits for the daily watches– still it doesn’t feel like England in mid-winter yet. The cooking has been remarkable and my notion that I’d lose weight on the boat is slowly reversing –apologies from the Swallows watch for eating all the amazing cornflake cakes! Sorry! – I keep telling myself the extra rations will provide warmth when the temperature does really drop.

Hope all well at home xxx

Ben, crew

Happy birthday from your bro in the Atlantic hope you have a great day

Will celebrate with you on my return.

All here is not very exciting due to the lack of wind but are hopeful for tomorrow.

Best to all Chris T

I grew up in the sea and poverty was sumptuous, then I lost the sea and found all luxuries grey and poverty unbearable. Since then, I have been waiting. I wait for the homebound ships, the house of the waters, the limpidity of day. 

Bert

Hi all.

It is stupid o’clock in the morning, I have just been relived at the helm to come down below to sort the brews. Only to enter the galley to a feast of cooked chocolate on marsh mallows and chocolate cornflakes, with super pocket rocket Tony covered in it creating a feast for the crew.

Are there no bounds to this wee crazy Irish man? Big love from mother Steve.

Can I lick the bowl please?

Steve.

To Steve,

No you can’t, stick to sweetcorn if you know what’s good for you.

Regards

The Jolly Green Giant.

Mid Atlantic Chocloate Gate

Hey Lesley,

Well here I am again on the 3 am until 7am watch, and that was a difficult get up….. So a couple of things today:

Chloe has asked me not to mention the fact that she likes chocolate in this post, so I won’t but safe to say Cheese is not safe either when she is around.

As you may see from above Tony is cooking his second batch of goodies, could this be due to chocolate-gate where a whole batch went missing while his watch were in bed? Who knows but it’s safe to say lessons were learnt on the last leg and goodies are in abundance on this one.

I’ll be cooking bacon for breakfast in a couple of hours, this makes me happy very very happy, I seriously doubt any of the off watch will require the gentle shake to wake them, when the waft of bacon will do the same thing….luxury is what it is, although there were high fives going around on pancake breakfast day. Who cares about cornflakes when there is bacon and pancakes in the world.

Let’s talk about motoring…

So motoring, let’s talk about that then, as it’s what we’ve been doing for a couple of days now and will likely be doing for a few more according to the skipper, when you are sailing on a tack there is always a downhill and an uphill side, which means although you have to do some form of step aerobics/monkey swinging to get anywhere it also means that there is always one wall to lean on that is constant. With this motoring is the water was flat so would the boat, but there are just enough waves to wobble the boat around meaning you can’t reliably lean on a wall and still expect it to support you for more than a couple of seconds so although not as physically hard work as moving around on a tack it, has its own annoyances.

The engine noise is a constant, and  although loud it does become a bit of white noise that covers the snoring, but also mean all conversations have to be had a few decibels louder, but if we were trying to sail in this wind, well there is no wind, we would be bobbing along getting nowhere.

So looks like the plan is to get to Falmouth in good ole Blighty and go out as a whole crew for a traditional British meal, apparently a curry will fit this bill, even though we are basically living on Something with Pasta or Something with Rice on board, from this point onwards the only hard plans that are being made are the hard requirement to be in a pub for the first of the 6 nations games, so this will likely be in Weymouth somewhere.

Tonight’s blog post was brought to you by Madness and the Beautiful South

Love as always

Budgie

Posted by: First Class Sailing