FROM 1-14. Nearly to Falmouth

May 13, 2005 - 0330hrs UTC

0330hrs 13 May 2005 UTC 17’03”N 035’22”W Map Ref 214 4903nm (2464nm to Falmouth)

Greetings fromTradewindTerritory(North variety),

I’ve spent the last couple of days trying to avoid sitting on my pelvic bones. The gunwale bum is back again. I can sit sort of sidesaddle with all the weight on the bottom of the thigh on the cockpit seats or even better sit on top of the bottom washboard in the companionway. This last one is the most comfortable and gives the best relief to the constant jerky twisting motion that you get while sailing to windward in these lumpy short steep Tradewind seas. Many years ago I crossed the Atlantic and Pacific sailing downwind with the trades behind us beautiful,no sore bums in these conditions. Many times I would have looked back at the seas and thought….bloody hell I’d hate to be going into that….here we are doing just that.

Were about level with the Cape Verde Islands at the moment and a big slide to the left would send us downwind straight towards Antigua, I can seethe boat now parked stern to the quay in English Harbour, I can hear a steel band playing under the trees outside the Admiral’s Inn …..Ahhhhhh …downwind no sore bottom. But enough of this these are mutinous thoughts…..onwards..north …Falmouth for orders and all that nonsense.

Sitting on the washboard with the rear end inside the cabin and the rest of you in the cockpit facing aft it reminds me of the old westerns. At the end of a thirty day cattle drive there they are at the railhead stockyards sitting on the top rail of the cattle crush rolling a cigarette hanging their rear ends over the rail, saddlesore. It’s getting better now a little bit of harsh treatment to let it know who’s boss, a liberal application of metho to the raw bits seems to have sorted things out. It must be at least 30 days we have been going to windward.

Allan just read your latest soliloquy I’ll go out and contemplate the the night sky, consider us in silent companionship.

That’s enough of my misery you know I’m better I’m sitting down to write again….cheers Pete.

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