In the last 24 hours – 160 miles sailed
As the sun rose, Mid-Atlantic Christmas Day began on board Two Drifters. Santa must have visited in the night as in each sock that was pegged out, he left a large chocolate replica of himself. Yum Yum.
Shouts of “Merry Christmas,” rang out on deck as the morning watch commenced. Tinsel adorned the inside of the boat and the men enjoyed wearing their Santa hats in the sunshine. Our theme continued with a turkey casserole for dinner, followed by Nev’s homemade mince pies and accompanied by Christmas cracker jokes kindly sent in by the 2D land crew
Elsewhere, we all gathered up on deck to celebrate the halfway mark since leaving Cape Verde. Breaking the dry boat rule, a cork was popped on a bottle of Spanish cava, as the technical winner was Nev when we reached 1006 miles to go just before 6pm, but as we were aiming to officially celebrate the halfway point from 1,000 mile mark, the ultimate prize went to Karen who guessed we’d hit that milestone about 7pm.
The spinnaker has been flying all day, and the boat has loved it. We’ve achieved an average speed of around 8 knots and at one point hit an impressive 11 knots. The sea state is starting to settle into a rhythm, although we’ve yet to find the big rollers, but the sun is now gracing us for the whole day. We’re still lonely out here with no boats in sight, but we have been monitoring where our friends on J-Squared are and hope that we might see them in the next day or two.
There’s a big debate going on board as to whether to turn our clocks back as we pass through the appropriate time zones. Last week, when we arrived in Cape Verde, we had to switch to one hour behind GMT, which we’ve now adapted to and is currently ship’s time. Ultimately when we arrive in Barbados we will be four hours behind GMT so have another three hours to adjust. But to switch or not to switch as we travel through the zones? That is the question!
The pre-midnight/pre-midday watch crew say yes to a switch, which is now overdue, as it’s currently pitch black in the mornings and first light is not appearing until 8am, making the day very long – and sunrise will now get later and later as we travel towards Barbados. The after-midnight/midday watch crew don’t want to revert until we reach Barbados as their body clocks are already used to the hours they should be on watch and they don’t want to confuse them by changing them back every couple of days.
It’s not something we were advised how to handle by the rally organisers. So any thoughts and advice from those in the know would be gratefully received.
Two Drifters
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