Date: 24/11/2009 16:00:02

Latitude: 24.26
Longitude: -20.48

Our second night at sea has been much more comfortable - even maybe a bit too comfortable! No complaints though, the upside has been that everyone has begun to sleep well when off watch and the early mornings are a little less of a trial. The key is to sleep whenever possible off watch during the first couple of days so that the body adjusts, and by day two or three of the passage, your body suddenly says it loves being up at 3am, working hard in the dark - oh, and remember to smile!

We have split the crew down into two watches so that we can run Northern Child 24 hours a day. I have been asked in the past what we do at night - do we stop and all get into our bunks? Well, no actually! We run the boat continuously and we always have a minimum of 5 crew on watch steering the boat, trimming sails and keeping a good lookout. At these latitudes, we are currently 250 miles west of El Argub, Mauritania (where?), dawn and dusk come very quickly and 12 hours out of 24 are dark. So half our trip across the Atlantic is at night and the importance of the moon and a clear sky become obvious. Currently we are extremely lucky and we have a moon building towards full on the 2^nd December, a lovely situation to be in as providing skies stay clear we will be sailing along the path of the moon out to the west as the sun drops below the horizon each evening.

Watch times are set in stone, and the two teams do 4 hours on – four hours off at night, and 6 hours on - 6 hours off during the day. Watch team A, for example, on the first night will do 1800 - 2200, will then sleep from 2200 - 0200, and be on deck again for the 0200 - 0600 watch. They will then be off watch between 0600 and 1200, taking the afternoon watch from 1200 - 1800, which is where the pattern starts again but with team B starting on the 1800 - 2200 watch. Therefore each watch does 2 night watches one night, one night watch the following night. One day they have the morning off and the next day they have the afternoon off. It's still tiring, however, as even when off watch there is continual movement and continual noise - remember, no one said that crossing an ocean was easy.....

The sail repair mission progresses; the rip is approximately 5 metres long and unfortunately in the sail cloth itself, not along a seam. This means that we are having to make a hem, butt the two edges together and tape over the gap. We then drill holes through the material each side of the gap with an electric drill and sew the two parts together.... not a quick job, but progress is being made. We should get it finished sometime tomorrow. Two of our main enthusiasts for the task have turned out to be Steve Nelson and Rebecka, shown working hard on the repair.


Each day I shall describe one or two of the crew to you and today we will start with Steve Nelson. We have two Steves on board and Steve Nelson is 41 and a computer consultant from North Tyneside. He is married to Karen and has three children. Steve has only been sailing for a couple of years and has recently completed his RYA Day Skipper up in Scotland. Steve is a volunteer member of the RNLI's Inshore Atlantic 85 lifeboat based out of Cullercoats, on England's East coast, 50 miles south of the Scottish Border. His motivation for crossing the Atlantic is that he sees it as a personal challenge and wishes to gain sea miles and experience.

Over the last 24 hours the weather has been kind to us and the seas have calmed down a bit. Progress has been good and we have managed to sail 191 miles at an average speed of 8 knots over the ground. You can follow our progress through the World Cruising Club website tracker page, or by following the link on www.northernchild.com. A bientot - Julian