A big thank you to all for the various birthday gifts the girls managed to smuggle on board without my knowledge. Great stuff. Just as well there was nothing requiring declaring to customs, as the declarations have already been submitted! Also many thanks for all the birthday messages, great to get those.
The bubbly will have to wait a couple of days, dry ship whilst on passage, but will make sure it is put into the fridge in plenty of time to chill.
One gift was a pizza stone for our little Webber bbq, and funnily enough, Chef Liz has some flour and things for making pizza dough. So homemade pizzas today. Now this is exciting, cos we don't even make pizza at home, so to try it on board a yacht 100's of miles from anywhere is pretty daring stuff. Unfortunately our mushrooms had to be donated to the fish,as they became a little rank, so we have no mushroom for the pizza topping. The pizzas turned out supremo perfecto, the only thing missing was our "delivery boy" James.
What with attempting fresh bread for the first time yesterday, pizzas today, I wonder what tomorrow might bring - cake maybe? (dreaming I think!)
I also received a "ships stamp" for Serena-T ( many thanks Sarah) which has turned out brilliant, so we can now stamp official customs documents.
An odd item that appeared was a dressing gown! Now why would you need one of those on a boat in the tropics? As it happens, I write this sat in the cockpit on the 8-12 watch, in a 12 knot cool breeze, yep you guessed, wearing a dressing gown!!!. It's nice and warm and cosy, enough to make you sleepy on watch. I just hope I don't go overboard wearing it, I think I'll sink like a rock when it gets wet!
So where is everyone, there is nobody else on this ocean? Oh of course, your all busy at work! And for those not working, you are probably sat in front of the fire with a blanket over your knees!
For those following the "updates", you will know we had some illness to deal with at the start which curbed appetites for several days, so after Alfie complaining about the number shown on our scales at home, I am sure if she stood on them now she'd have much better things to say about them!
Fishing so far has been unfruitful, even towing the whizz bang super lures that Tom made for us, but maybe we have been going too fast for much of the time. Was hoping to see a nice Mahi-mahi, as apparently they are yummy-yummy. There's still time, and we will be going a lot slower for the rest of the trip as the wind is fading away to nothing for a couple of days.
Seen plenty of birds, feathered, and lots of boobies too (also feathered)! We even went through a "gang" of birds fishing, but alas, whilst they were busy filling their tummies full of fresh fish, our lures still came up with nothing. I Never have been a good fish catcher!
Alfie was very helpful when the going got slow, she sat on the transom and finned with her feet, which gave us an extra knot, but she soon got tired (or bored) and gave up! No stamina these old ducks!
We seem to have settled into a daily rhythm now, preparing food etc, cleaning up, assessing the weather gribs, tweaking sheets, spinnaker up / spinnaker down, attending to Ray the auto-pilots incessant alarms every time the wind shifts etc etc. All this keeps us busy to the point the days and miles are slipping by really quickly - just wondering when the pace of this "cruising" lark is going to slow down!
Anyway, enough of my babble, Ray is calling for attention again, so will deal with that and then try to work out how to get all this sent into space and bounced back again for you all to peruse.
Many thanks again for all the birthday wishes, oh and James, you shouldn't be so rude to your father, remember your birthday is just a couple of weeks off, and you are not such a spring chicken yourself these days!
Au revoir for now.