Happy Birthday to You

29 May 2008 19:15UTC 29'31N 064'30W

One of our crew, Doug, has his birthday today! We've made a (cheese)cake to celebrate and will be opening a halfway decent bottle of wine with dinner. Doug brought top quality Dominican cigars for each of us so we will also be lounging in the cockpit at sundown.

For his birthday, the weather is being calm but not obliging. We are still motoring, having run the engine all night and now all of today, we have a light five knots of wind for dead ahead of us so there's no prospect of sailing anytime soon. We are now one hundred and seventy miles from Bermuda, and if we keep going as we have been then we will get there just after dark tomorrow, which is a shame because we'll probably have to wait for daylight to go into the anchorage because of the big coral reefs that surround that area. So perhaps we'll sail a bit to slow down this evening, although that tempts fate to extend our voyage even further, so we need to be careful.

However we do it, we anticipate arriving in St Georges Harbour, Bermuda early on Saturday morning, clearing customs then finding provisions and water, saying goodbye to Doug and finding our new crewmember, Yan. If the weather looks good, we'll leave on Sunday, giving time for a good crew meal on Saturday night.

I think there's a crew here looking forward to a hot shower, iced drink and large steak.

Cocktail last night was another rum punch, with grapefruit juice and coconut rum. We also sampled the malt whisky supplies before a very quiet night watch. In this trip we've seen two ships and one other yacht so far, we are certainly well away from the world's shipping lanes.

All's well. N.

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