After the bright colours, songs and celebrations of yesterday, today felt a little sombre. Over night on the 17th we did a lot of motoring, there simply wasn’t enough wind to sail and bobbing around a night it not good for morale – at least motoring gives the boat some stability and a kinder motion for sleeping.

The morning was better, Tina was on the first daylight watch and reported nice sailing, calm seas and plenty of wind so we buzzed along at 7 knots and everyone else slept in. Teo was up next, with Mia close behind. Teo in the morning is the perfect addition to this boat and our family, he is not quick to life, preferring to ease into the day gently and so long as a bowl of cereal is forthcoming fairly promptly he is usually church mouse quiet. In fact, there is a good chance he’ll be pretending to be a mouse or some other cute creature, at the moment he is a ‘crystal critter’ from Star Wars. Anyway, no screaming, running, singing or anything else offensive comes from the little man until the sun is well up.

As soon as Jon stuck his head out of bed the wind died and on went the motor. Then it came back a touch, and died again. The main problem with light wind is not actually going too slowly, we’re not in a hurry and if you plan to cross oceans at a brisk walking pace, then travelling at a shopping mall stroll isn’t much different. No, problem is the damage that light winds do to sails. Sails like to be full and stay full, not to fill and collapse, fill and collapse… and while they are collapsed rub against the wire rigging. The solution is a switching to a lighter sail which can fill with lighter airs, in this case our spinnaker!

We have a spinnaker onboard, it doesn’t get a lot of action being a bit of a beast to handle but today looked good. Tina and Jon started by digging out all the necessary lines, blocks, sails and other bits and bobs from the forepeak. Then we started to rig it all up, attach blocks for turning lines, run the lines, untwist things, put the pole up etc. etc. Before we started Jon made two predictions, firstly that the whole process would take an hour and secondly that when it was ready the wind would have built to be too much to fly this light sail. Right on both counts!

But at least we were sailing, albeit with the spinnaker still on deck ready to go. After an hour or so the wind died again and the was our chance, so Mia and Tina on the winches and Jon managing the ‘sock’ up she went and pretty she was too. After a bit of tweaking we were making 5.5kn under spinnaker alone – good enough for lunch and medals.

During lunch we noticed that a squall line was building behind us, which would bring both rain and more worryingly too much wind. So a hasty bite to eat and down came the spinnaker just before the rain and wind hit hard. We switched the spinnaker for a headsail alone and all went down below with the hatches closed for a favourite board game followed by a movie, as it somewhat traditional on Itchy Foot rainy days.

Not much else to report for the day, we didn’t celebrate half-way as it didn’t feel like a celebration kind of day, tomorrow looks better. We continue our journey West, as all the other directions seem longer.