A little friendly controversy . . .

The morning started on the 3am-6am watch. The stars were out in spectacular fashion, the whole sky was lite up. There were also lights on the horizon, not of land, but of boats. Many boats – well there were 3 in all during that watch but after days and days in the middle of the Atlantic seeing one boat is kind of as big thing. Pictures even get taken at times. Afternoon was a time of a little controversy. There has been an investigation into what exactly happened that day where the apparent 14.5 knots happened. It has been found that the auto pilot was being used during the time when the speed first occurred. Jake admitted to this but assured us that they turned off the auto pilot when it was seen and took control of the helm themselves for some of that record speed.

The crew still remain skeptical of this. Not to mention since Jake can pretty much fix anything, it has come to our attention that he may have tampered with the speedometer on the boat. It seems to hit a max speed of 10 knots and then refuses to go any faster. Due to this, we have resorted to using the GPS speed inside the boat. The crew tried for most of the day to break the record. The conditions were at the best they could be for this. Big rolling sea’s behind us, a good bit of wind but it wasn’t to be. I think the closest someone came to it was the Captain with 13.8 knots after riding a big swell. This brings me to the next topic of controversy. The audacious statement made by the Captain that some of those swells we had out there today were in excess of 30 feet! First mate Chris and Jake were refusing to believe such a bold statement, they were thinking along the lines of 10 to 15 feet. Whatever it was, there were some big swells out there today in the Bay of Biscay.

Dinner on the boat was an interesting time. I was preparing to go on the helm and since the temperature is at its coldest at the moment I’m layering up as much as possible. Dinner was served and to all our surprises it was one spicy dish of chili. Everyone was near sweating after the big bowl of it. I was pretty much ready to go out on the helm in shorts and a t-shirt. Nonetheless it was tasty and kept me warm for my duration on the helm. We are inching closer and closer to our final destination. In fact when I get my 12am wake up call tonight we will be only one more day and a couple more hours to our final stop of our trip in England! England, you know, fish and chips, bad weather, worse food, Mary freaking Poppins, England!

Calvin