In DTF terms (Distance to the Finish), in the last 24hrs we’ve successfully managed to crawl up the ladder two places! In a minute I will download our emails for the day and find out if we have continued to pull ahead of ‘Roberto Coin;’ fend off the ever-climbing ‘HCL Workforce 1′ and keep ‘The Reason Why’ at bay. With 1405nm still to go, there is everything to play for. Boat speed continues to be king, but there is still something of a north-south camp divide. According to weather forecast data, there is more wind further south, but how much wind and is it worth the extra mileage and diversion to get down to it? These are an example of some of the decisions we have been making every day.

Fortunately we’ve been eating like truck drivers, so the weight of food onboard has nearly halved. (34 days in, only 28 hopefully to go) This should add an extra nth of a knot to each stroke! Otherwise boat speed is still king and if you’re going to race seriously (did I just confess that?!) the boat must be mollusk-less. Trawling a small vegetable patch on your boat’s underbelly is distinctly not fast! So this afternoon we seized the moment before the wind got up and plopped one at a time, over the side.

Sadly I must report that our stripy fish family are no longer hanging our by the rudder of ‘Dream Maker.’ I don’t know what Yellow Fin tuna eat, but I rather fear that our stripy fish family became stripy fish sauce. In the process of scraping off the boat’s new fur coat, which was very slight since we only did last on Tuesday, I got some great shots of the big Yellow Fins. I am particularly pleased to have proof of them, since a fraction of my friends believe that when I race offshore, I loose my marbles (not wishing to leave out the another fraction who believe I’ve lost my marbles anyway, which is why I race offshore). One or two of the shots are of the Yellow Fins in action, pecking away at the fuller-grown mollusks on the boat’s skeg! ‘We are providing a food source!’ I gargled to Mick through the snorkel! Perhaps we shouldn’t scrape them all away, I thought, thinking that if we left a bit of seafood, the Yellow Fin circus might continue escorting us and become our pro-active boat bottom eating team.

With the return of the breeze came a slow rolling swell from the NE. Since the moon rose, this swell has built. Peaking at about 25ft in height, the waves are colossal, but it’s the fetch which is the impressive part. Between each wave peak, there is the equivalent distance of 2 or 3 football pitches. Traveling perpendicular to this swell is us; the wind and the waves being generated by the wind. The effect is mind boggling. In effect our world is moving on two axis. The swell lifts the water which we’re traveling on up, up, up, as we continue on a course 90 degrees to it, surfing the new wavelets generated by the wind. Then when the swell wave rolls away from under us, off to the SW, ‘Dream Maker’ tips slightly to her port side, before carrying on west as before, but at the same time descending down, down, down into the trough of the NE swell. Consequently the horizon oscillates between being a squiggly line (the view from the wave trough), to being perfectly flat (the view from the wave peak). After 3 hours of rowing and thinking about it, I concluded that Mick and I must be crash-test dummies in a wave tank (remember the Jim Carey movie, ‘The Truman Show?!’) or that the world is actually flat (I once consider becoming a member of the ‘Flat Earth Society’ for shits and giggles) and that if we row harder, the end of said horizon is all concrete slip-way and there we can haul out ‘Dream Maker,’ pop her in a 40ft container and ship her the rest of the way! (It was definitely time for me to sleep!)

To take or not to take the Diclofenac Sodium tablets nearly became a bone of contention between Mick and I over the past few days. Mick: ‘If you’re not going to take the advice, stop asking for it!’ Mick is pro taking tablets for everything, while I am strongly against taking tablets for anything. Ref: my blog about us being chalk and cheese. My logic was that I wanted first to try and eliminate the cause, before treating the effect on the basis that if I change all the variables at once how am I going to know what worked? Having now created the ’super splints,’ massaged up to the elbows and even resorted to herbal medicine (about which I know very little, except that the ‘Rescue Remedy’ supposedly contains whiskey- I’m receptive to being educated, Anita!) and still waking up with puffed up digits, I’ll admit Jo, that it is time. Bring on the drugs! Luckily there are two boxes of the little pink things as it seems that Mick is going to lead by example. He too is now experiencing painful claws. (Inversely, I’m now wearing socks for minor ’shrapnel toe,’ but my toes have never as lacerated as Mick’s). Oh woe is us!

Mood colour of the day- brilliant sparkly violet (like two-toned taffeta fabric, where a brilliant sparkly blue thread is interwoven with a brilliant sparkly green thread), seas 2-4ft/0-25ft!
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19.45 GMT
Barometer 1016
Wind ENE 10-15

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