The Great Atlantic Bake Off

Yesterday was a day of multiple sail changes, as the wind shifted between southeast to east and we swapped between the gennaker and the Blue Water Runner (we are heading west; the Blue Water Runner likes the wind dead behind i.e. easterly, but the gennaker - which is faster, better behaved, and, most importantly, prettier - likes the wind with a bit of south in it. Who would have thought sails could be such prima donnas). We have got this swapping down to a fine art now. I release the halyard from the mast and control the descent of the sail, Jacob makes sure it doesn’t get tangled on the way down (and in the case of the Blue Water Runner, that it doesn’t make a leap for the sea) and Vanessa hauls the sail through the forward hatch into the forecabin. It’s then a case of swapping over the sheets and halyard to the new sail, and then up she goes. We can probably do the whole exercise in just under 10 minutes but it’s very tiring on the arms.

In the middle of these repeated sail changes Vanessa thought it would be a lovely idea to make bread. We have a few packets of bread mix which makes the whole process a lot easier, but the one thing we are lacking is flour. Have you ever tried needing dough without flouring the surface or your hands first? The end result is the kind of stickiness you could normally only achieve by giving a toddler an ice cream on a hot sunny day. Vanessa, normally so mild mannered and softly spoken, didn’t react well when I suggested we might want to change sails just as she was armpit deep in sticky dough! Anyway, the bread tasted delicious and so justified the near marital breakdown.

In other culinary news, we have invented a new biscuit that we plan to patent when we get home. You take a packet of bourbon biscuits and keep it in a Tupperware box containing a few packets of Polos. You then leave it there until it’s 11-months past its sell by date, and then consume. The end result is slightly soft but very minty tasting; like an After Eight in biscuit form - yummy.