It’s a good day here on Disco. Fresh socks, AND a fresh t-shirt. You can’t get better than that on another day mid-pacific.
Then there was breakfast. We had egg and bacon in freshly baked wholemeal bread rolls – very nice indeed. I recently discovered that, as with the biscuits and nachos, strategies had been employed to ensure the bacon was safeguarded against a late night raid by me. Apparently when I used the entire and only pack of bacon during the trip to Hawaii to supplement pasta pesto it wasn’t OK. So, half a pack of bacon was used for breakfast, from Pack A, which is kept in a different, secret location to Pack B. They are definitely learning.
We had been pushing north with a wind shift that had allowed us to make a good angle in that direction, but in the early hours we lost the shift, and decided to put the tack that should now take us ESE, directly to our next weather waypoint. There are about 200nm to go until we reach this, so we have a good day or two of a luxury port tack, before probably having to revert back to the old familiar tacking game.
I’ve no idea if lunch lived up the dizzy heights of breakfast, as I slept through it. However dinner certainly did. I awoke to chicken burgers, and not just any chicken burgers. Henry had wanted to do breaded chicken, but unable to locate any good breadcrumb material, had gone with porridge and oats as a substitute. So fried porridge chicken is the latest addition to our repertoire aboard Disco, and it’s pretty good. Amazing the innovation that necessity breeds.
While the food today has been dazzling, the view has not. The North Pacific is a rather bleak environment for the time being: constantly overcast, sky and ocean a single shade of grey, and a truly uninspiring scene. The blanket cloud cover has continued into the nights, and it has been a while since any stars or the moon have graced us with their presence. We’re convinced they’re hiding up there somewhere, but are fast becoming a distant memory. Despite the lack of view, the evenings do seem to have settled down, and the last one has been unhampered by squalls or any other significant changes in weather, making the night watches slightly less stressful, although maybe enjoyable is a stretch too far right now.
Now at the end of the day, we’ve made fast and furious progress since tacking, with speeds consistently in the sevens and eights, bang on target. The only blemish on an otherwise very satisfactory day was Henry spotting that one of the cars that attach our mainsail to the mast track has detached. This means there is an approximately 12ft section of the mainsail completely unsupported, which isn’t great, as it risks overloading and consequentially damaging the adjacent cars as well. As it was noticed just as the light was going, we will wait until first light and have a proper look aloft then. Not necessarily an easy fix, especially as it’s one of the more substantial cars that attach directly to the battens in the sail, but we’ll find a way round it. Always do.
Date: 1st July 2017
Time: 2320z
Position: 28°11.0N 137°27.8W
COG: 120°T
SOG: 7kts
Wind: ENE 4-5
Swell: NE 2-4ft
Sky: 8/8 altostratus
Weather: Fair
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