Hi from ‘Happy Spirit’, “Oh we’re going to Barbados, in the sunny Carribbean sea..” well hopefully we will make St Lucia instead but the song sounds good and it keeps on replaying in our heads and reverberating around the cockpit. At least we are still going in the right direction.

‘I’m keeping out of Laurie’s way thismorning ‘, said John, ‘in case she wants to start messing about with sails again’ ( this is the trouble with having dinghy racers aboard as crew!).

So, we blew out the kite yesterday afternoon, and decide to save our others for times when the wind is really light and we can’t make any progress without one. So instead we decide to hunt through the sail bin and see what we can fish out, We find a bag marked ‘staysail’, and decide we’ll have a go at hoisting it on the inner forestay and fly it to leeward to complement the poled out genoa.

This sounds good in theory but I have to climb the mast first to release said forestay and extract it from an intimate liason with the mast steps. Job done, we hoist the ‘staysail’ to find it is a puny little storm jib of uncertain vintage and decorated with an array of rust stains. Ah well, anything’s better than nothing, so we’ll leave it up for now and resolve to find a bigger sail tomorrow. Did someone say this a race?

John’s retired to make flapjack and Chloe can’t wait for the bananas to ripen to make a cake, so it back to domestics and nearly time for afternoon tea..

Andy Morris “Happy Spirit” ARC yacht no 53 OCEAN 60