British Soldier: and we thought we were having a tough time

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> Position at 0730Z Thursday 14 July: 50deg03N, 09deg19W - that's due S of
> the Fastnet Rock and due W of Land's End.
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> Very light winds, even lighter than expected and definitely unwanted. The
> last 200 miles are proving most frustrating! At least we have company, the
> 60' racing yacht 'Ourson Rapide' (currently not very) joined us yesterday
> morning and is still in sight a couple of miles to leeward, drifting in the
> same general direction of the Scillies at about 4 knots (last night mostly under 3 knots). And another yacht
> just came into view on the horizon to the N. Carina perhaps? The weather
> forecast said it'd be light, but not this light. Heavily revised finish
> times all round! Still Friday, for the moment, but probably pm....
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> The gas supply is holding up but battery charging has taken a greater toll
> than anticipated and we're now sucking on diesel fumes. Luckily we've got
> contingency plans in place. If the gas runs out (there's still a bit left
> if we shake the bottle) we revert to emergency catering: Desperation Level
> 1: tinned beef stew left to warm during the day on the black non-slip deck
> coating; dried pasta left to soak for an hour or two; Level 2 - eat more of
> the nutrigrain bars (seriously desperate). Level 3 - add peanut butter to
> the nutrigrain bars. If we run into night 21, dinner
> = even more nutrigrain bars.
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> Just when we thought we were having a tough time with slow days, here's what
> our friend Capt James Kayll of The Light Dragoons had to say about his
> 3300-mile 75-day row across the Indian Ocean, which he completed last week:
> "How I longed to travel at 7 knots in my rowing boat! Our top speed was a
> surf of 4.4 knots and our best daily mileage was 81. Quite used to seeing
> 0.0/0.1 on the speedo as we stemmed the wind and held some current. The last
> 250 nm took us over a week, with 24 hours on para anchor when only 106 miles
> from Mauritius was a tad tedious... All in all 75 days and I'm willing to
> wager a beard comparison? We only saw 3 whales but did spend an hour
> swimming with a 25 foot mink whale as it investigated the boat. Fishing was
> a waste of time, far too slow but I did manage to gaff a 35lb Dorado which
> fed us well. No pirates although one tanker turned of all its lights and
> switched to search beam assuming we were pirates. Only other incident was a
> tanker not using AIS, nor radar, nor listening on Ch16 and who came within
> 100m of running us down in the middle of thenight. 2 white rockets and 1
> handheld finally got his attention and he managed to turn in time"
> Inspiration; it can't get that bad! (can it?).
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> 159 miles to go.
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> TransAtlantic Race tracker: www.transatlanticrace.org/tracker
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