The weather forecast told of no wind and lots of motoring so we were pleasantly surprised to be able to sail for the majority of the day. Albeit a bit slow and not really in the right direction, but if you do this crossing in May rather than March you should be happy to take what you get.
Jon focused on beefing up his fishing game by tidying his lure and hooks up, now they are nicely organised inside a bag we’re sure to have more luck. Tina started the day with a spot of Yoga on the aft-deck which shows you how calm the sea was on day three. Mia and Teo approached the day with a similar sleepy style, Teo coming out of the back cabin laying down on the sofa and promptly falling asleep again for an hour. Thankfully the coffee perked everyone up.
There was some renegotiating who was making lunch and dinner, I’m not sure what was traded but somehow Mia got out of making lunch and Tina make lovely cheese and onion toasted sandwiches. Teo, not being a fan of onion that can be identified by eye (he’s happy with the flavour so long as he doesn’t know they are there) managed to get himself honey on toast – there are clearly some benefits to flirting with Tina and being so cute.
Sometime in the afternoon Teo came scampering up to Jon exclaiming that “the toilet is leaking, it’s all over the floor!” He wasn’t wrong. Thankfully the entire bathroom (heads) floor in Itchy Foot is really a giant plastic shower tray so any spills, drips, slashes and overflows are caught and easily pumped out (now that Mia stripped and fixed the shower pump in Panama) into the sea. But, yes the toilet was leaking. Basically it was back flowing from the sea into the bowel and because we are leaning over so much it has sloshed onto the floor. So, Jon has the dubious honour of stripping the toilet at sea and replacing the Joker (I wish I was) Valve which had failed. Then a big clean-up and we’re back in business. The only collateral damage was to a bag full of cans which Mia had sneakily squirrelled away under the grated floor in the bathroom (she has an amazing ability to find places to store things) and so she had the pleasure of sitting on the back of the boat and cleaning them too.
The whole event was musically narrated by Jon and Tina singing alternating verses of ‘There is poo on my screwdriver / hands / toothbrush / feet etc.’ until Teo demanded then begged us to stop.
Living the dream.
As ff that excitement wasn’t enough for the day then Tina ran the first Itchy Foot quiz, involving question about Panama, a music round and even a poetry round. It was neck and neck until the final poetry rendition when Jon and Teo snuck the win from out of Mia’s hands and were proclaimed Champions by Freddy Mercury. Jon claims poetic genius, but the safe money is that Tina is just sweet on Teo.
Finally before dinner Jon read a couple of stories from ‘100 greatest solved mysteries’ which was given to us by Interlude Mike in the marina. In the cruising world it is common to refer to people by boat name followed by first name – for example Itchy Jon – no we didn’t think about that before hand. We started with the mystery of Big Foot and finished with Sea Monsters!
Unfortunately the wind died after dinner (great stir-fry Tina) and we spent most of the night motoring. Nothing to report from the nights watch other than optimistic and disappointed seagulls following us in the hope that we were a fishing boat. We’ll try organising the lures by colour tomorrow.
