D+8 Sailor's Craft

The open ocean beckons. We are now at 27N 19W heading generally WSW. The winds are steady and the only decision is do we gybe today or tomorrow? We are making good progress and the sweepstake is on as to our arrival date. If we maintain this pace, we'll be in Barbados on Boxing Day. We're taking a more direct northerly route at present because the winds give us best speed in this direction and the forecast is steady, but we may run hard south if the weather ahead begins to destabilise.

We've have the spinnaker up for 24hrs now, although the night was a bit hectic. Firstly, the wind veered as we neared the last island in the Canaries forcing us to gybe at midnight, then later the shackle that holds the brace to the spinnaker pole failed, releasing the kite - twice. Since then it's been smooth running.

We briefly saw the light of another competitor last night off to port but again did not pick anything up on the AIS. It is odd that, in a race where we are obliged by the rules to have our AIS on, each time since the start that we have encountered another of our compatriots, they have not been picked up on the AIS. At one point, we questioned if our own set was broken as we got very close to Artaius, and then spent several days in sight of Cepango but with no returns, and again saw nothing when Valteam overtook us last week. Then we were party to a cutting email exchange between some of the leading boats suggesting that there may be some selective use of AIS among the more racy crews.

After the children's morning of school work, James and Dave have been teaching them traditional mariner's crafts. They have been making monkey's fists, square knot rounds and solomon's braids. James even briefly sighted a 7m long black toothed whale and suggested we should catch it to use for scrimshaw.

Yesterday's entertainment was also nautical but less traditional - James set up his laptop DVD player in the doghouse hooked up to the boat's 12V supply, whilst I plugged the headphone jack into the boat's sound system and we had a matinee showing of "Pirates of the Caribbean" with Dolby Surround Sound.

Food supplies holding well - sausages and mash last night; cottage pie followed by rhubarb crumble tonight. Frozen bread also looks like it may also last the trip but Dave plans to make fresh bread anyway. Both the air and sea temperature are now around 24 degrees so just about warm enough to leaven a loaf.