Monday 5^th  December  2022

12^o 35.6 N  50^o 36.7 W

Today's Blog by David  (Time zone: UTC -3)

It’s all around us really ………. and below us ………. and falling down on us -  from ABOVE!   

The first squall of the day was  at around 04.45hrs  and then again circa 07.55hrs .  Thereafter, we dodged in and among the squalls all day. A brief three hour respite this afternoon, but now the sky is pretty dark grey  L.

These squalls have been accompanied by some wind so we have made better progress than I feared -  625 miles remaining to Union Island, and about 500 to Barbados.   Looks like we will motor overnight, get some sailing tomorrow and then …………………… it’s a 48 hour Donk into Barbados – arrive Friday?   

Connectivity

This morning, I refreshed the email as usual to get any inbound mail and to ask for a weather forecast. The usual routine is to first  deal with any inbound traffic then refresh the mailbox again, sending any replies and receiving the forecast…. Except today, when the second refresh didn’t work.  I got the inbound mail but the satellite connection failed when I tried to respond (quelle horreur!). 

I spent an hour with the manuals – (even tried Rule 101: reboot everything and try again!)  to no avail. The phone seemed connected, so I called Gavin (whose name has oft frequented these pages) to ask for help.   My call diverted to a standard message service:. A very pleasant sounding woman told me: “We’re sorry:  It has not been possible to connect your call because your account is out of credit!”

Well, that’s easy then.  All need to do is to make a call and top it up  - except that it wouldn’t let me make a call because I am out of credit. Catch 22, and all that. 

So I radioed one of the boats with whom we’ve formed a loose friendship over the airwaves and asked them to contact Gavin. Which they did and - about 7 hours later - I am now able to send this to you. Job done. Now, I am not quite as inept as you now assume.  We do have a process to avoid this scenario: Gavin should receive an email from Inmarsat telling him (me) that my credit is low and he automatically tops it up for me - to avoid just this scenario – but it seems he did not receive such notification. Hmmm! 

Chocolate Mouse – Suspect number 2

I think it is fair to say that, this time,  we caught him red handed.   I woke up this morning to find the culprit, lying on the carpet in my cabin having flown through an open window and  completed its repast:  

An errant young flying fish -  caught at it – at the same time using my Apple charger for a heightened sensory experience!!

This time,  I reckon we have him   “Bang to Rights”!  But even  this chap’s  brief has questions about the lack of any evidence putting him inside the fridge at night.  Even so – “Come on!!”  caught in the act!!