Be The Jam

Position: Le Constant Bank

S 06°15.36'

E056°15.23'

Back on a heading of 310 degrees with a moderate wind from the SE.

Woke up to the sound of the fishing reel playing out at high velocity this morning, no more than usual I suppose, but through my foggy haze of sleep induced trauma (The shock of waking up in the confined space I sleep in is bad enough) it seemed we had caught Jaws' Bro. As it turned out Rupert dragged in, be it a small (compared with the Wahoo), a fine specimen of a fish; a blue fin tuna.

That makes on our penultimate day of crossing the Indian Pond 23 days at sea, 22 cans of tuna, 21 turds, 20 times my nose has peeled, 19 fish lost back to the sea, 18 bottles of beer, 17 times fixing the bloody engine (to no avail), 16 times farted (philip - you can add a couple of zero's onto that number. Philip the farting Frenchman), 15 gallons of fresh water, 14 boxes of matches, 13 repaired sails, 12 belts broken (on the autohelm), 11 water pumps fixed, 10 books read, 9 bulbs blown, 8 bread baking days, 7 cartons of cigarettes smoked (not myself I might add, gave up!), 6 boat's seen, 5 times over board, 4 tuna fish caught, 3 hours lost, 2 times up the mast, and a huge Wahoo on the end of the line!!

Song writing was never my strong point. We should be getting into Mahé sometime tomorrow morning if all goes well. We took another 2hrs of our watches this morning, that makes 3hrs lost on our crossing, gives you some idea how far we've gone. We are now only 4hrs ahead of GMT.

2315hrs

Gibe onto final course to Victoria - Mahé Seychelles , heading 290 degrees.

Just finished a watch of 5.5 hrs (1700 till 2300); don’t feel tired, even though it is tough today at the wheel, bad swell, strong wind, and trying to hold an awkward heading. Maybe after ten days of manning the wheel between the three of us 24 hrs a day, we are all iron men or maybe I'm just excited about having a beer tomorrow! Well it’s of to bed for a couple of hours sleep before my 0200-0500 watch.

Position: Fortune Bank

S 07°35.41'

E 057°54.23'

Having put in a Jibe this morning; Heading 010 degrees with a moderate wind from SE.

Well the wind has died; we are plodding along slowly northwards. We have to put in this tack to make it into Mahé on the East side, Victoria harbour. Well we were hoping for more wind, like the past few days, at that rate we would have been in Mahé by Thursday morning. Running low on nice food, we'll have to start having large quantities of noodles with baked beans soon.

Position: Saya de Mallia Bank

S 08°16.31'

E 060°32.11'

Heading 280 degrees with a moderate wind from the SE.

Just came down the mast. Got up this morning (0945 hrs) a little late because I'm on late watch (0200- 0500), to find the aerial for the radio had come undone. The sea has got quite a swell on it today, and it was suggested I go up the mast! Greeeeaaatttt! So up I went with a few tools and took it down. Well it wasn't that easy, it meant swinging around the top of the mast for half an hour, but managed to bring down the aerial, which is good, to replace would have cost a few bob. We lost the wind direction finder the other day, we noticed it was coming undone, but it was nearly dark, then we went through some storms that night, it was gone the next morning.

1925 hrs

Been a great day for sailing. We are still heading 310 degrees which is bang on course for Mahé Island in the Seychelles . Made good progress again today, lets hope this wind stays with us all the way to Mahé. Ate the last of the fish today! That means we have all eaten over 6Kgs of fish each over the last day and a half. I think we are going to turn into fish soon. We snagged another fish today, it was to big. We think it might have been a shark, Rupert thinks he saw what appeared to be a shark following this morning. Anyway it didn't take the lure, but it ripped one of the hooks clean of and bent the other one badly. The ratchet on the reel went out really quickly, we were lucky not to loose the whole line.

Looking at the chart; the distance to Mahé now looks like peanuts, when we arrive we will have done over 3000 miles in a straight line (that's not taking into consideration the fact that we sailed all the way, not in a straight line in other words) since we left the port of Semarang (The Black Hole) Indonesia. We just topped up the diesel tank on the engine, we only managed to get 25 Lt. into it, just shows how little we have used the engine on the crossing (The capacity is 165 Lt.).

Well hears signing off I can smell that ice cold draught beer on the horizon, I'll have dreams about it tonight!

Position: Indian Ocean

S 08°09.21'

E 063°13.24'

Heading on bearing 280 degrees. Wind South easterly Moderate to strong.

Loads more problems. Problems by the bucket load. Getting very serious now. The Jib (Small Genoa) is so damaged now that we risk trashing it completely if we use it again. So that means we have no Jib to use before reaching the Seychelles . Another problem the pole for the Spinnaker snapped in half last night! That leaves us Spinnaker less as well. And finally Rupert spent most of the morning attending to the Genoa, the repairs we did earlier are holding, but more holes are appearing up and down the Mylar, Panels (Type of material), so much so that the sail has gone to the top of 'The high risk of tearing'

Category, (because we have one of those lists on board); so that has to come down in any strong wind! The only thing that seems to be holding together is the Main sail.

You might ask why is this happening? Well the sails were put away 2 years ago, not used since; and only now it has become apparent that they were not rinsed in fresh water. The salt water has attacked the sails in a variety of forms, like the eyes, the materials, even the stitching. The problem is they are the only sails we've got. The storms we're encountering aren't helping either. Last night was bad again. We have decided there is a storm highway or motorway between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres;

Think of a large motorway, like the M25, then there are these HGV's driving along it, except these HGV's are the size off 747's! There are a lot of them and they are all travelling in the same direction across the eight lanes! Some of them pass others, some of them crash into each other, but instead of stopping they carry on in a miss mash of wreckage, reeking havoc as they go. Now we are a tortoise, going very slowly across this 8 lane motorway of HGV747's! This tortoise is late for a date and has to cross the motorway as soon as possible. All the tortoise can do is start crossing the road. Well inevitably the tortoise gets clipped once in a while. His toe gets run over (The eyes in the sails go), his foot gets it (The Genoa gets holes in it). For those animal lovers out there I won't tell you what happens to the tortoise when the Spinnaker boom got broken!! Fortunately the Tortoise (i.e. Can Can - our boat) hasn't been run over completely!

Well enough of all that, it only makes me feel tired when I think about it (we are approaching another squall as I write). The one good thing to come out of the storms yesterday is a very, very big fish!! We think it is a Wahoo! It was about 4ft long and weighed about 20-30Kgs, it was very hard to judge, and all hell was breaking loose round us at the time. We chopped it up and into the frying pan it went. We managed to take a picture to prove it, so there will be many fish tale stories to be told! The problem is it is so big it is nearly too big to eat. I have been cooking the bloody thing since we caught it, what with no fridge or freezer, the only way to preserve it for a day or two is to cook it. So we had two huge steaks each last night, fish soap for breakfast, fish and chips for lunch (That's all I could think of doing with it so I passed the rest onto Rupert to finish cooking), and finally for Supper tonight and for lunch tomorrow we will be having fish curry courtesy of the Rupert! Fish, fish and more fish. Our guts are on over time at the moment with all this protein, in the middle of the storms when all the hatches are battened down, sometimes it’s a fight as to who gets to be outside on the helm, the smell is out of this world. I'm sure if Philip wanted to he could hum a tune or two, all he has to eat is some porridge and he's off!

So making good progress at the moment, just hope we don't get hit by any of those HGV747 types or we're doomed!

Position: Indian Ocean

S 08°12.11'

E 065°40.45

Heading on bearing 300 degrees. Wind south easterly Moderate to strong.

Well… another stormy night, lots of squalls and rain. It looked like the wind was going to fail us yesterday and leave us in the doldrums again. Then last night it came back; hard. With it came a dozen storms which we are still tripping over right now. Woke up this morning with my face stuck to the ceiling (quite common these days) and listened to Rupert having a shower in the middle of a storm whilst at the wheel. One thing that is good about this rain is the amount of water we can save and the opportunity to have a fresh water shower! Had the Spinnaker (large) up all day yesterday and then as darkness drew in, the port side sheet snapped up near the boom. The shoot collapsed and there was a mad kick, bollock, scramble to get it down. We then put up the Genoa , which was quickly followed by and lot of wind and our first squall of the night. Bit lucky really because we were seriously contemplating leaving the Spinnaker up all night!

Well not much else has happened really, we're back on course and we did very little mileage last night.

1800hrs

Loads of storms coming in thick and fast. We are in for a heavy night. Got the Genoa poled out. Wind is strong South easterly. Heading 280 degrees.