After Elaine and Justine spent most of their first watch last night sitting at the helmstation on squall duty, we decided to stay in the saloon for our second watch, although that changed as soon as the first squalls appeared on the radar during the last hour of our early morning watch. Reefing us back to the 3rd reef on the headsail, the first few squalls passed without incident, other than forcing us to change our heading a little with the wind shifts. However, the last squall of our watch caused such a major wind shift just as Roy popped his head out for the change of watch, that he had to help Elaine jibe Paw Paw, assisted by the engines, given the amount of speed we lost in a few seconds. Fortunately the moon was still up and dawn was breaking, shedding some light on the situation.

Once on our new heading, Elaine and Justine made breakfast for the three of us; Paul was still catching up on lost sleep, following which Elaine headed to bed, leaving Justine to stand in for Paul on watch with Roy.

At some point during their watch another squall developed bringing some rain with it, but Elaine slept through it all. When she surfaced around noon, she found Roy on watch, Justine resting in her cabin and Paul fast asleep in the cockpit. Roy had also baked during his watch; this time baguettes. Soon thereafter, while dishing up tinned peaches and custard for Roy and herself as a midday snack, Justine and Paul appeared, having heard movement in the galley; they too then opted for a midday snack; tinned apricots and custard.

With everyone’s hunger pangs satisfied, Roy and Paul trundled off to their respective beds, Justine assumed her position in the cockpit and Elaine made her lunch using the last of the bread Roy had baked yesterday, but not before she discovered a Treasure Hunt that Justine and Paul had created for her. With a little help from them both, Elaine managed to find all the clues hidden in various places around Paw Paw, including the fridge, Roy’s cabin, the rope bag at the helmstation, the tea canister and eventually the oven glove, discovering a Crunchie, one of Elaine’s favourite chocolates, hidden inside it, kindly donated by Paul from his goodie bag. What a lovely surprise and a fun way to take her mind off her methotrexate day. Thank you Justine and Paul!

Around 1400, Roy surfaced briefly to have some of his baguette for lunch, then trundled back to bed, while Elaine and Justine took care of reefing and unreefing the headsail for the afternoon squalls that appeared to our stern, but, thankfully, passed to starboard without incident.

By 1500, after pursuing a more direct route to St Lucia over the past number of days, we’d managed to shave just over 100NM from our passage, leaving us with 575NM to go, although it was still debatable as to what day we would actually arrive in Rodney Bay on the Caribbean island of St Lucia. Hopefully we can hold this course, regardless of the very lumpy, confused and uncomfortable seas. A washing machine has nothing on this ocean!

At around 1600 Roy and Paul had both surfaced and Roy commenced his regular inspection of all the rigging, including the water tanks, since it won’t be long before we can start filling one of the tanks with the excess emergency drinking water we have in jerry cans, thereby lightening Paw Paw’s load a little. Although we’d made a good dent in our provisions too, given how long our fresh produce lasted, we’ll definitely have an excess number of tins to donate to charity following our arrival in St Lucia.

Before we knew it, though, another very dark, moonless night had descended upon us once more and the watch schedule had started, but not before Elaine and Roy had jibed Paw Paw one more time, putting us on a port tack for the night with a COG (Course Over Ground) of 260T, under a full headsail alone. Unfortunately, without an anemometer we can’t report the wind speed, but our SOG (Speed Over Ground) remained in excess of 6 Kts on average and by 2300, we had 530 NM to go.

We would also like to wish Elaine’s great-niece, Taylor, a very Happy 16th Birthday for yesterday and hope that she had a wonderful “sweet sixteen” day!