Date: 02/12/2009 20:09:04

Latitude: 19.09
Longitude: -47.16

Daily Log Number 10, ARC 2009, Wednesday 2nd December. 1240 UTC
Position: 19.09N 47.16W
 
We have had rain in the last 24 hours, a lot of rain in fact. Both watches have received equal deluges and therefore no one feels left out..... As we discussed yesterday, the other downside to where we are is the lack of breeze which has meant progress has been a little slower than late - oh, how I do hate being right! 
 
The practical problem we are finding with the weather pattern at the moment is that with continual rain clouds and squalls bearing down on us wind direction and speed is extremely variable. You come up with a surefire idea about sail trim or putting up a spinnaker or whatever it is, and then almost immediately when you've made the change the wind alters yet again and what you did proves to be totally unworkable! Of course there are three ways out of this: 1 Give up and motor - no way. 2 Just chill, drink rum and think that the wind will come good when the wind comes good - hmmm, not sure that is a Julian solution. 3 Make the crew work harder by trying lots of ideas. Ah, now we're talking. In the last two hours alone, Christian's watch of Vladimir, Steve Nelson, Robert, Rebecka and Juha have had a rain shower with 20 knots, beat into the wind with the boat heeling over at 30 degrees so that the starboard side deck is under water, put a reef in and out, run out of wind and put the spinnaker back up. It's a good idea to keep people busy! What fun they're having.
 
Simon's watch had dolphins in the moonlight last night - ahhh. Luckily the dolphins were on the moonlit side of the boat so that the crew were able to see them jumping and diving through the silvery waves. That was without a doubt an extremely precious moment on board.
 
Steve Nelson has had an eye infection for a few days and we have been treating it with a fairly first aid type approach. We haven't been able to clear it up however, so this morning we made use of radio medical advice and used the satellite phone to talk with an A and E doctor in a hospital in Portsmouth via Falmouth coastguard. There is a system in place where the coastguard can almost get an instant connection to a doctor for us, but in this case the very helpful lady doctor wanted to refer it to an eye consultant. Wait for this though, within 20 minutes they had got back to us with an answer - how amazing is that when we are in the middle of the ocean? On board Northern Child we carry a huge inventory of controlled and prescription drugs, and we have been able to match two different eye medicines with the recommendations from the Portsmouth eye specialist. We have started a new treatment regime with the addition of Dexamethasone sodium phosphate which we will carry out for 24 hours before reviewing the situation - we'll let you know how we get on.  


Two pictures of crew members today. The first is of Robert who spent 35 years all over the world working for the UN. He is married to Sandra and has three children Marc, Rachel and Paul, together with 2 grandchildren and a third on the way. He started sailing dinghies 35 years ago with Sandra, and for the last 10 years they have moved onto sailing cruising boats with friends. Robert has also sailed an ocean passage on a 48 foot ketch from Phuket to Sri Lanka. He has had a longstanding ambition to sail the Atlantic and has found it to be the experience of a lifetime. 'I have enjoyed every minute of it, there's been no downside at all.' We are looking forward to meeting Sandra who will be joining Robert In St Lucia next Wednesday.

The second picture is of Vladimir, our Russian crew mate. Vladimir comes from a little place in Siberia, the closest city being Krasnogarsk, 4,500 kilometers from Moscow. He is married to Olga with two sons Ivan and Stepan. Vladimir started teaching himself English 3 years ago because there was no one in his area he could learn it from .... Since childhood, Vladimir has always had the idea in his mind that he wanted to be a sailor, and started with 2 weeks at a sea school in Gibraltar in 2006, there not being many sailing opportunities for him in Siberia. In 2008 Vladimir sailed on the Costa Brava for two weeks, again with an English sailing school and is now sailing his dream, the Atlantic, on Northern Child.