Sunday 6 May

A beautiful sunrise and the start of a pleasant and busy day. Winds lightish so still motorsailing through a boisterous chop. Good Sunday morning job of clearing a fwd heads blockage. David did his daily mangle of sun, horizon, and plastic sextant, but his 4 hour morning watch had left him no spare neurons to do the sums. A lunch of dorado and philosophy was followed by a lecture on Wagner. David gives talks on Opera, philosophy, and Irish language, in return for skipper's weird culinary efforts, filthy jokes, salty dits, and lessons on Astro-Nav.
Wind freshens finally so by noon we allow Betty/Bertha the Beta (now at about 450 hours) to have a rest. We need help on which of these to call the engine. Superstition requires it to be a respectful name for a loyal friend.
Sunday aft is Grab Bag sort out day. We don't actually put anything extra in the grab-bag, you understand, we just make a list. The list will be useful in the liferaft as it'll give us something to read or eat or set fire to. If we had any matches. And anyway, having a list makes us feel good.
When we transmit on SSB radio the boat goes round in circles. The autohelm computer is jealous of the power the radio takes. They've never liked each other. Sending e-mails and talking to Herb or other boats requires all staff to be up and about. Poor reception and noise means that radio stuff seems to take hours and it would be quicker to take written messages by pedalo instead. Things improved drastically today when skipper found that switching everything electronic off, particularly the radio's own digital modem for the laptop, drastically improved reception, and stations that once sounded like a 1st WW dictaphone broadcast through a bucket of gravel now appeared to be feet away. Daily BBC News available at last, and we should be able to talk to Herb properly tomorrow.
By evening, at the end of Day 5, we've covered over 600 miles from St Barts. At only 5 knots average this is not fast for us, but no disaster either. The wind freshens and swings around astern so that by nightfall we are reefed and rolling along on a quartering sea and wind under full moonlight.
Our current worry, and there always has to be one, is that we have been haunted by strange and loud creaking and knocking noises from the lower mast spreader areas, pretty much since departure. No amount of searching has found the cause, so skipper rests uneasily in a sort of hollow in the pit of stomach way, when off watch. Understandable, given we are in 7000 metres of water and 650 miles from the nearest land.
End of Day 6 position 27d00N, 58d37W.
PS: does anyone know the date of the annual bull-running festival in Terceira Island, Azores?. We think we might be in time to take it in as we pass through.
M & D