Cape Verdes bound for Argentina - 30 Sept
by Kate Laird

8 15 N
25 33 W

Good afternoon. Hopefully the map site is working again - http://www.expeditionsail.com/plotframe.htm.

We're sailing again after a night of motoring. It is good to see the miles tick away as we motor, but it is definitely better to be sailing, even at half the speed.

The days are blurring a bit in a haze of Harry Potter on tape and, for me, working on my celestial navigation. That has been a very good exercise to keep me busy, though it is becoming obsessive! Hamish is greatly relieved because he found the Pickwick Papers on board. He has read John Simpson and Alan Bennett and The Arctic Grail by Pierre Berton already, and he thought he was out of books - but at the rate he is going I am not even sure the Pickwick Papers are going to last that long! I've now started on The Arctic Grail. Funny, most of the Arctic and Antarctic books I bought for the boat came highly recommended, or off reading lists, or ones we already had read - but this I bought on a complete whim for Hamish a few Christmases ago having seen it in the book shop. Hamish said after reading it, "We can throw away all the other 50 books we have on Arctic exploration! This is the one to read." The difference, I think, is this book is written by a historian rather than an explorer, and so it is put into context; and a real historian, rather than the pop oceangoing historians that are springing up all over the place these days on the back of Patrick O'Brian.

We're doing watches of three hours in the night and four hours in the day, so that the rotation changes every day. We've set our clocks so that sunrise and sunset is at 7:30, which makes happy hour and dinner time feel about right, and it is no problem to the 6 am to 10 am watch to do the first hour in darkness.

Today, Helen helped me set sail for the first time. I was setting the jib and she eased the roller furler line from the door. A big help, because one needs an extra arm to do it solo. I think she was quite proud of helping, though she did let it out rather fast! (I didn't tell her that.)

Whoever is on 1800 - 2100 cooks dinner, which is a bit grim in this heat. Last night I made some rice and opened a tin of mixed beans and made a salad dressing. Hamish was much braver this lunchtime and boiled some potatoes. Our provisioning is definitely geared toward high latitudes. It will come back into play in a few weeks, but I don't know what would actually be inspiring to cook in this weather. We are exceedingly grateful for the fridge, which keeps the milk cold, the cheese hard, and so on. Butter lives up in the galley under a damp cloth, and the rest of the cheese and butter are vacuum sealed in the bilge. We have tinned butter as well, but the vacuum seal seems to be keeping the butter fine, even though it is running with oil inside the packet. We put it in the fridge for a few hours before trying to transfer it into the butter pot. I've been making yogurt, which Anna and I like, and Helen and Hamish scorn.

I forgot to say the other day that we have passed our farthest point South on Seal - 16 30 was our farthest south before (Big Creek, Belize).

You can learn more about the Lairds and Seal at their website www.expeditionsail.com.