Hi all family & friends

Today's blog starts with a thought that flying fish are so "yesterday". We have now seen hundreds - so the novelty value has worn off! Our main hope is that they stop bombarding the boat as we have to pick them up and throw them back into the sea. To be frank - they smell even worse than we do after 2 days at sea without a shower. A few dolphins and whales are on our wish list.

On the smell point, skipper Duggie has promised us a shower in the next couple of days - he must be in a good mood. Probably because we managed to put the spinnaker up without making too much of a mess of it and it is still flying, without any wraps around the forestay or any holes appearing in the sail. However the wind is so light now we are only managing about 4 - 5 knots - so the likelihood is that we will be in Barbados in time for Christmas 2010! Will anyone reading this blog please pray for wind.

We did have a short squall a little while ago with a blast of high wind and enough rain to get wet, but not enough for a quick shampoo and soap. So I am writing this with wet trousers until the end of the watch.

Other news? We did a "deep clean" at 3.30 am last night as a couple of the crew developed a bit of a bug. I will not go into too much detail - suffice to say that the 3 people affected were limited to the starboard head, whilst the rest of us used the port head. It does seem that it was a 36 hour problem and they all seem to be nearly over it. The good news is that the clean seems to have worked and whatever it was has not spread to the rest of us.

Our new crew member, Phil, ignored all advice to get some sleep on his first night at sea - because he was so interested in the stars and the sailing, However, by mid-day he was fast asleep on the foredeck, safely harnessed on. Only the call to lunch was enough to wake him.

One consequence of the current low boat speed is that we have resorted to I-Spy to keep us awake in the 4 hour night watches. Unfortunately, our brains have gone so soft that when Chris "spied" the letter "m" he had to tell us that the answer was"mast". We have obviously been staring at it for far too long!

All for now - as I have to go and change into dry kit.

Rowena