Rollercoaster diner

We passed the halfway mark yesterday. When we reached the halfway point crossing the Atlantic, we had steak, pepper sauce and chips to celebrate. We sat at the cockpit table and I even had a glass of wine. If we didn’t have photographic evidence to prove it, this memory would be filed with all those others that have been embellished by the passage of time, like those endless sunny days that made up a childhood summer. It just sounds so implausible; at the moment I’m struggling just to stay on my seat at the chart table. We did try and celebrate. Yesterday morning Vanessa made pancakes, which were delicious and thankfully the maple syrup helped them stick to the plate just long enough for them to make the journey from the galley to the cockpit and into our tummies. As an aside, whenever I have pancakes I am reminded (and I remind everyone around me) of the most amazing breakfast pancakes I ever had. We were staying in a B&B near Vancouver, and given the time difference, we were ravenous by the time it got to breakfast. This particular B&B had solved the perennial North American breakfast dilemma: should I have pancakes or should I have the full “English”. Their solution was to offer both! And so I had a “mini” stack with maple syrup plus sausage, bacon, eggs etc. It was amazing and clearly very memorable.Anyway, back to yesterday. It was far too bouncy for steak and red wine, but we felt we deserved a treat, so Vanessa poured out three cokes. A brave thing to do when you’re being thrown around, but they were safely secured in my “Muggie”, a bulletproof contraption for holding drinks at sea. Bulletproof, that is, until a rogue wave crashes into the side of the boat and and sends the whole lot flying. The coke is now swishing around in the bottom of the fridge making everything sticky, but today is not the day to tackle that problem. Tackling it now would risk toppling head first in its cavernous depths, and I really don’t fancy ending my days freezing to death, crunched up with sausages, lettuce and three thousand tins of butter.———-radio email processed by SailMailfor information see: http://www.sailmail.com