Chapter 2 - aa: Tuesday 28th, February - Logged 126 miles

The Westerly wind continued during the night, during which we flew along at 5/6 and sometimes 7 knots.  It looks as if, at long last we are out of the variables and 'running the Easting down"  in the approved style.  I suppose we can't have everything and our Westerlies are accompanied by a heavy Southerly swell which makes "Penelope" roll mercilessly.  Nothing in the cabin nor to deck will stay "put" unless lashed down.  In the galley all is chaos; the lentil soup pours over, half over the stove and half into the fruit salad, whilst the mixture of fruit salad and lentil soup, in it's turn, pours over the table and on to the deck or down into the cupboard where we keep canned goods for immediate use.

Cups, plates, pans and jars jump clear of their brackets and shoot across the galley, whilst the "Primus" stove fails to vaporize the kerosene and big white flames shoot out from under the pans, adding gusts of black smoke and acrid fumes to the medley and the mess. 

How the skipper managed to produce our lunch today I wouldn't know.  His curses - enough to make a parson blush - were heard all over the ship, even above the sound of the wind in the rigging.  Nevertheless we partook of: -

Cold fresh tunny and caper sauce
Hot (canned) steak and kidney pie and potatoes in their jackets
Canned marron glace paste

in the cockpit (our dining room).

We have suspended trolling as the fish have taken all the spinners!

Logged 3,000 miles from Rio.