Day 17

Routine has definitely set in and it's great. Sun rises, check sails, untie a reef, change sail plan, pole out a headsail, whatever needs to be done to keep us moving along well for the day. The person who's just finished watch goes to bed the other has a coffee wakes up, looks at the day, checks for flying fish and squids on deck, looks at the rigging then assumes the position and settles in with a book. The other wakes up sometime after 9, decide what to have for breakfast- fruit and yogurt (none left), toasted sandwich (thin pickings),scrambled eggs (most landed on floor) on toast or just plane boring toast. Then if the weather lets us we chuck out a line and try and catch a fish, kill and clean it if we do. We play a game where we guess how many miles we've done in the last 24hours, the alarm goes off at 1156 and we put a fix on the chart and see how many miles we actually did, looser gets the beers from the fridge. Hang out in the cockpit for an hour or 2 and decide what's for lunch and maybe try to have a shower on the cockpit floor if there's no chance of getting thrown overboard.
Then if we've caught a fish it's fish and salad if we haven't it's normally a salad of some sort - cabbage of lettuce if we have and whatever other veggies we've got and then tins of corn, beans or tuna, sometimes cous cous, healthy simple living. While we eat that we watch a series on TV (Homeland at the moment) then after maybe one of us goes for a siesta waking up at 5 for a customary rum and coke, put in an extra reef in the mainsail if needed for the night then talk about what to eat next. Lately with all this fish we've been having various Thai curries, chopped onion, garlic, carrots whatever else, fry it in either Thai red, green, yellow or Penang paste and then set aside and fry fillets of fish then add the veggies just before it's cooked and some coconut milk and lime, tiny bit of sugar and voila!, job done never get sick of it! Although we do have a few Indian curries to mix it up a little also with meat from the freezer. Then run the engine to charge batteries/make water then maybe watch another episode while eating and start our watches at 9, 3 hours each. Every second night we each get the 9pm watch which means every second night we get a half decent sleep. Watches have been pretty easy of late with no shipping about, just look out for big black clouds that bring the squalls and then furl in a little headsail if needed and turn the knob on the autopilot and run with it until it's blown itself out and then roll your guts out for a while as it's taken all the wind with it and left us there wollowing, soon enough the sun will rise again and it starts all over, happy days
The flag is looking like it's just about had enough??!
Thursday 28/6 4pm position 6*18S 123*13W. 1017nm to Nuku Hiva