Update from Irving

Day 13

30N 28W
Been too tired to want to write, don't fancy it much now but I'll forget if I don't jot it down. Twelve days of sailing and the true wind brings to us twen-tee-hee knots (and a high pressure system in the sector West of here). The dreaded high with it's loathful windlessnes! Even last night we were becalmed again. We'd been sailing well but the stiff breeze came and went like a sneeze. At sunset we dropped the sails. The waxing moon cast a silver tongue over the undulating seascape and at its tip we sat, wallowing. Played chess (Casper winning again - but it took him three hours) and waited. The wind is back but forcing us East which is where we must run, by all accounts, if we are to escape the centre of the high and also avoid a large patch of shallows. We are tired. We are cold. Everything is wrapped in a damp shroud. Everything is salty and salt traps moisture. I could do with a wash. My hair is so dirty I could wring it out and use its oils to fry supper in.
33N 29W
Two weeks its been now. The Westerlies have not come. Today we enjoyed an easy Northeasterly with a near flat sea. A rest after several days of discomfort: cross waves, large rollers and a restless wind. One minute slack sails and the bridgedeck slamming, the next the sheets taut as guitar strings in a vicious 35 knot gust. Just after midnight on the thirteenth day the inner forestay broke loose. The plate connecting it to the forward beam has snapped clean in half. We set out two halliards forward to support the mast in its place. Not a disaster but something to intrude on our long awaited harbour holiday in Horta. We are definitively headed to the Azores now. Which island exactly depends entirely on the winds which are refusing to cooperate with weather predictions of late. Its not so damp now, as we are back in a high pressure system, but the nights are chilled and the duvet has come out of storage. The moon is fat and last night rose behind us like a vast amber disc, casting a long ribbon of light in our wake. The ocean has lost its vivid blue of the lower latitudes but is no less beautiful. When the cloud steals the sun, the brooding ocean turns a pearly grey. When the sun is realeased and shines brightly, without holding back, the ocean becomes an infinite silver carpet.
This morning - a sigh of wind. Barely enough to keep our sails alive. Casper sleeps, enveloped from head to toe in a blanket like a caterpiller in a cocoon. The nights have been cold. But now the naked sun warms the day. I take a salt water shower on deck. The light breeze licks my skin which has been stifled in the same old clothes for far too long. We are down to our last 40 litres of freshwater. I bake, now that the sea is flat and the sun high enough to breathe warmth into the dough. Time is in slow motion. We ghost on. 300 miles remain.