Christmas Eve

We had gusty winds throughout early Saturday morning, and this involved quite a lot of sail faffing throughout my watch. It also meant that Nick was up and down during his off-watch, so I managed to give him an extra hour and a half in bed. The sea was pretty big with a wave height of 3 metres at times. This could have been due to the fact that we went over a sea mount yesterday - literally a mountain under the sea which causes rougher conditions. The depth dropped from 3000 metres to 500 metres. So the day was spent as most days are, watching, cooking (Nick baked some really nice bread) and listening to some cheesy christmas tunes. Later on in the day, my christmas eve treat came in the form of a cockpit shower and during this we saw 2 Tropic Birds - exotic looking specimens with long, white pointed tail feathers. They were skwawking at each other and making such a racket.

For a while now, the wind has been consistently good in terms of direction and speed for us, but is forecast to reduce tomorrow and pick up again on Monday/Tuesday. It feels like we're eating up the miles and the boat literally seems to be loving the adventure!

Thought you might like to hear an outline of our Christmas Day. It will go like this: 8am wake Nick, make cuppa, open prezzies. 0900 check in and listen to festive Christmas morning net. 0930 Ellen goes to sleep, Nick embarks on dinner (catching fish). 1300 Ellen gets up and helps with the dinner preparations - peeling potatoes, opening the tin of peas etc. Open a bottle of wine. 1500 Eat dinner & finish off with delicious cake! Practise performance. 1800 Perform Christmas medley to Free Spirit. Rest of evening to be spent playing with new toys from Father Christmas and keeping a watch!

Harmonica Practice

Lastly, a question for you all. Why does Father Christmas have 3 gardens? Ho, Ho, Ho!

Merry Christmas

Position at 15.10 UTC: 15deg 01'N, 47deg 45'W
Daily distance run: 140nm; cumulative distance: 2194:
Engine hours: 0
Distance to go: ~ 773nm
Conditions: NE 15-20 knots, moderate/rough sea, 1014 millibars