Blood, sweat & tears

17 Jun 2009

Well, yesterday was another flat, calm and extremely hot day on the ocean, where every inch of progress required blood, sweat and tears. Blood from Fiona's wounded shin, sweat from young Jo who always has a 'bead on her brow' and tears from Sarah - she's a bit of a crier our Sarah!!

While slogging away on one of the afternoon shifts Sarah and Elin were therefore very surprised to hear the 'purr' of an engine. Since there isn't an engine on board the great ship Pura Vida the pair decided that it must be a cargo ship that would imminently appear on the horizon. So they got Jo to switch the AIS on and constantly scanned the horizon looking for the ship and it's direction of travel. But with nothing appearing in sight and the engine noise getting louder the girls got nervous. "It might be pirates" said Elin, "planning a silent and swift approach to kidnap us!"

The thought made Sarah very excited, as she thought that all pirates looked like Johnny Depp!

As the engine noise continued the girls got increasingly worried however and decided that they should alert Fiona who was in the bow cabin in case we all needed to be on high alert to deal with an emergency situation. On opening the hatch door the purr of the engine became a roar and the girls fell about laughing realising that it wasn't an engine at all, but Fiona contently snoring away in deep sleep! Emergency was averted!

The slow progress is particularly frustrating as we have our thoughts on nothing other than getting to land now. And any further delay to beer, bed and boys (not necessarily in that order) is not really appreciated. Here's hoping for a favorable change soon!