Another sneaky cut and paste!.....
Morning,
A frustrating night with the fleet catching us steadily all night and the front runners moving further away. It is early days yet and the Warriors still have to 'bed-in' and get used to their new surroundings. This is going to take time, but they have done well so far considering!
The English Channel has been very kind to us so far with minimal swells and good winds to see us past the Isle of Wight and beyond. Our next turning point is north of the Casquets Traffic Separation Scheme (TSS) which is north of Alderney in the Channel Islands. When we get there there will be a foul tide trying to push us back if we went south of it, so we have decided to go north where the tide will still be against us but will be considerably less.
It looks from the autoscheduled positions that most of the fleet have decided the same tactics, so that is a good thing and a great sanity check!
The Warriors have their first Happy Hour tomorrow during watch change, this is a time for the crew to air any niggling problems they have and to share over a slice of cake and a brew! This will happen every day if the weather permits, it also gives the two watches a chance to chat over 10 or so minutes before they go their separate ways and sleep or work!
It takes a week or so for your body to get used to the watch system so the first week, most of the off time will be spent asleep, once your body clock adjusts you need to sleep less and can use the time getting your admin squared away or reading a book or listening to music. Until that point it is a slog. The watch system we are using for this leg is six hours during the day: 0800-1400 and 1400-2000, then four hours during the night: 2000-0001, 0001-
0400 and 0400-0800, meals are done for the oncoming watch half an hour before their watches and for the off-going watch as soon as they come off deck 0730-0830, 1330-1430 and 1930-2030. Again it takes a while for your body to get used to these timings. All meals are prepared by the crew who take 24 hours out of their watch system on a rota to cook all meals, bake bread and cakes and clean the galley and saloon areas.
For those of you that have been on board Mission Performance, you will understand that you have to be quite imaginative with the meals on board and bring your own 'je ne c'est quoi' to the galley! Brian Harlock the victualler has worked tirelessly for the last few months coming up with a menu plan and catering for that. It is a thankless task, but someone has to do it otherwise we would starve!
I’m back off up top now to see if we can make this yacht go faster!
Until tomorrow
MPW's OFN.
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