Saturday 30th November 2019
Hello Blog readers!
It’s my birthday today – whoop whoop! I was serenaded on deck by a dawn chorus of ‘Happy Birthday to you’ – just as well the guys are all very good at their chosen professions, I’d worry if they had to rely on singing to earn a crust. Everyone made me a lovely card out of a granola box, so no expense spared or extra weight carried on Oarsome Dream.
We’ve seen lots Flying fish jumping out and flying around this morning and we even found a couple on deck, drying out nicely in the toasty sun. Yesterday was spent in the company of ARC yacht Hanse 411’ Siberati’ but we lost them over the horizon in the night.
We took advantage of light wind this morning to pull down the mainsail and stick on more spreader patches. Despite carefully taking photographs so they went in the right place, it still took us three goes of up and down to get it right – a bit like mid-Atlantic pin the tail on the donkey! Don’t worry if our tracker route looked strange for a bit….
Thinks that’s all to report for now, more a in a day or two!
Much love to all at home Richard, Prue, Paul and Stuart
Monday 2nd December 2019
Here’s what we’ve been up to in the last 48 hours…1) Trying to photograph flying fish! Apparently, they are even harder than dolphins, so we just have lots of photos of blue water where a fish was a few seconds ago. One landed on the deck last night and one managed to hit the Bimini frame, so we’ll need to wash the scales off this morning. At least none of them have hit me yet!
2) We passed through 2000nm to go at 0504hrs yesterday morning. Ever since we’ve been trying to think of something that ended in each year as we tick the miles down – 1999 was the millennium bug worries, 1939 was the start of the second world war, 1805 was Trafalgar so we all saluted the flag and so on. However, we are shortly going to tick into the 1700s and we’ve run out of history! Please send us any useful year info!
3) Nearly got our second Mahi Mahi yesterday but it got away. Trying very hard to beat Martin on Rocket Dog 2 who has caught five already! We’ve changed lures back to the previously victorious red squid and are now discussing a second line
4) Breeze is filling in nicely today and from a good direction (wahooooo!), so enough from us for now, back to chewing up the miles towards St Lucia and the rum punch…
Love to all at home
Wednesday 4th December 2019
The good ship Oarsome Dream is still powering towards St Lucia! We did 195 miles and 180 miles in the last two 24-hour runs which is a lot better than we were doing earlier in the wind holes.
Still counting down the miles on the plotter waypoint and trying to work out the years. We’d been looking forward to 1664 because we all finally knew something for that year (Kronenberg larger was invented) but we were too busy chatting and totally missed it! Anyone got anything for the years around 1300-1400 where we are now? We’ve definitely run out of knowledge.
We are just about to hit the 1400 to go on the waypoint which I think is halfway assuming we log 2800 miles which is a bit more than the 2700nm because we went further than the Rhumb Line. But on likely days at sea, yesterday was halfway, but what it we slow down and then we’ve had a halfway party at the wrong time?! Anyway, celebrations include the last bar of Diary Milk from the fridge and clean pillowcases – we know how to live!
Better go, those watches won’t keep themselves.
Much love, Richard, Prue, Paul and Stuart
Friday 6th December 2019
Hello Blog Fans!
We’ve found a new game to take over from working out ‘what happened each year of the mileage remaining’ – set ‘miles to cover’ targets! This is what comes from a having a busy company CEO on the crew with a flight to catch …. Richard isn’t so sure, everyone else is busy driving hard to make sure they make their bit of the target! Although we are now nearly at 1066 miles so we might go back to the year game for a bit just because we know something about that year.
Fishing isn’t going so well at the moment either. We’ve lost four red squid lures and one blue squid and had to perform surgery on the fishing line which was about to snap and then got so tangled around the spool that it took Richard nearly a whole evening dog watch to untangle it. I hate fishing but I promise I had nothing to do with the tangle although I might remember it for when I’ve had enough of fishing in the future…
Busy morning today fixing a mainsail slider elastic and tucking in the second reef which was just in time as the next squall had 30-knots in for a bit.
Everyone now has clean bed linen (first time I’ve managed that on an ARC!) and we’ve still got Dairy Milk left in the fridge. We are having part baked baguette pizza for lunch, yum. Life isn’t all bad!
That’s all for now, Richard, Prue, Paul and Stuart
For the latest position information, you can follow Oarsome Dream’s progress on the World Cruising website.
