Crossed the equator yesterday involving “King Neptune” doing unspeakable things to ‘first timers’ inc me !!

They say that water goes down the plug hole clockwise in the Northern hemisphere and anti in the Southern, so naturally I was fascinated to see what would happen exactly on the equator!! Is it just me ?? The only usable equipment to test this was the heads, needless to say the whole research project got horribly complicated and messy with frankly pretty unsatisfactory no results, more detailed research needed (by someone else hopefully!)

Life at 30 degrees is exhausting, this is now our 4th day at it, you have to hang onto EVERYTHING, we stagger around the boat like drunks hanging onto whatever they can find because the whole of the rest of the world is moving.

On deck it’s a bit easier except that you seem to spend most of the time looking straight down at the water whereas only a few days ago it was on the horizon!! Energy levels are low and if anybody does something that means you conserve just a little bit, then it’s a hugely valuable gift.

Still, we’re now cracking along at 10 + knots which is great fun as long as you hang on. There’s a real sense of getting somewhere, Rio is now 1300 miles away and we do 200 plus a day. Talk now often turns to the first thing we are going to do etc etc the main social activity appears to be to drink a lot of cold beer!!

Now.. the big question of the day… “SHALL RICARDO CRACK ON TO CAPE TOWN??”

I think anyone who is reading this should vote on it at the bottom of this post …there is a place on the boat, I’m not completely sure but there is something about the huge Atlantic rollers in the Southern Atlantic. They are bigger than London Buses and the hills and valleys swallow up the boat completely (not literally hopefully!) so the whole thing goes out of sight inc the mast.

Downside is cost, time, energy and will I get any more out of it that I haven’t already.

Still, sailing into Cape Town sounds pretty sexy to me !!