Grey Power Blog - Saturday

Position on May 30, 2015 at 0600 hrs GMT

21°41' N,  60°23' W

Wind East 10 knots

Boat speed 6.6 knots

Course 015

As your would expect on the good ship Grey Power, we started the day with a tobacco inventory. The captain's rule is that the next day's allowance is only allocated after morning coffee and at that time I am pleased to report that there were two cigarettes carried over from yesterday. Based on the fact that there was one carried over from the previous day, this sets a trend that there should be three carried over tomorrow but this sensible suggestion felt on deaf ears as you would expect from the on-board team.

Anyhow, I am pleased to report that as of 9 am ship's time, our cigarette inventory was at 48. This is being closely monitored on an hourly basis when all crew are summoned to check the stores.

This morning we decided to tackle some more engineering tasks prior to breakfast. Robin and Dilip decided to work on the keel hydraulics whilst Josh was tasked with water making. Based on valuable input from Jason and his team @ Grenada Marine we managed to swing the keel to starboard whilst gaining a greater understanding of the knobs and leavers that live underneath our chart table. We are not fully sorted with the keel but work is in progress....

In parallel to this, Josh worked on the water maker. This was more a bag of mixed results - although we made 1 gallon of water (sorry our skipper is still stuck in imperial measurements) - we thereafter struggled to make any water. The current assumption is that the speed of the boat (6 Knots at the time of writing) overcome the suction of the pump. So sail slow for water or be dammed by the venturi effect of the water flowing past the hull. More experimentation required as sailing slow is not in the vocabulary of RKJ!!!

Anyhow our valiant engineering efforts were rewarded by an outstanding breakfast of fried peperoni, onion and baked beans! True cowboy food and perfect in the absence of fresh bacon! A perfect start to the day and living with the heat. At lunchtime, under the guidance of the world renowned expert on these tropical matters, Commander Dilip Donde advised us that the body was bad at retaining vitamin C under these extreme conditions so a double round of rum and lemon juice was ordered for all crews. This was

consumed around a debate of naval history and putting the world right both in the UK and further afield.

A "lazy" afternoon followed due to the climatic conditions before an outstanding pot mess resembling a chilli con carne without the chilli. It goes without saying that our Vitamin C levels were checked and replenished followed by a bottle of red to mark the mid point of this passage. We are now expected in Bermuda Wednesday(ish) and hence one bottle out of the two carried on board sounded eminently sensible.

So far we have crossed three other vessels. One on the first night, one last night and a catamaran today whose "captain" hailed us on VHF. Commander Dilip duly apologised for our Admiral being otherwise engaged with his pillow and unable to personally respond on the VHF.

Settling in for the night with good conditions!