"I must go down to the sea again
                    to the lonely sea and the sky
                    all I ask is a tall ship
                    and a star to steer her by"

So says John Masefield, (more or less), English writer. Well what old JM fails to add is 'good wind' - which, I grant you, might ruin the metre of the rhyme. Meaning that once again we are greeted by unfavourable winds, this time dead in our face as we head out into the open Atlantic beyond the Bahamas.

Nevertheless it is a beautiful balmy day, and despite the lack of sailwork some of us are kept busy with...well, sailwork. By which I mean the mizzen topgallant staysail (triangular effort - going from top of the back mast to middle of the middle mast) had got ripped up a bit in Tuesday's squall and was brought down for some needlework by Jeroen and myself, initially.

Now understand sewing a sail is not like putting a button on your shirt. The needle is the size of a nail and you are trying to force it through 2-4 layers of canvas. This is not easy, and needs assorted hammers, spikes, leather hand gloves and bits of wood to accomplish the task. so, given the degree of 'ripped-uppness' that we've had to repair, this is currently 'work in progress' as they say. Hopefully no-one will look too closely at my stitches, which look like they were done after one rum too many.

Jeroen is VC (voyage crew) as opposed to PC (permanent crew, know stuff)> It's a bit difficult for PC as they never really know how much shipwork the VC is prepared to do> Some VC will do anything asked of them, and some will only do the 'fun stuff' like sail handling (plus helm and look-out), and some won't do very much at all - which must make planning the watches a bit challenging at times.

But in today's glorious weather, life was good - and got even better when  Captain Rob decided to stop the ship after lunch and give the ship's company a chance of a dip in the ocean to assuage their disappointment at motoring for hours on end. Everyone enjoyed themselves thoroughly, except perhaps the inhabitants of the Florida Keys 100 miles or so off our port side, who may have experienced a minor tsunami when Phil (VC) made one of his less graceful entries off the ship into the briny.

The other highlight of the day was Woody's demonstration of how to use the sextant. Anyone under the misapprehension that the sextant is a navigational tool for simple sailors of a bygone era is sadly misinformed. It is a fiendishly complicated device for sighting off stars and sun, involving convuluted calculations which, by the time you have worked out where you are, you've moved anyway, so you have to start all over again. Have a go yourself, and you'll be amazed we ever discovered anywhere except by happy accident ('happy' that is unless you happen to be one of the unfortunate indigenes, in which case you are probably extinct by now).

And so ends another day on the Europa - a glorious sunset accompanied by a tasty meal from our resolutely cheerful chefs du galley, Annalies and Rensje (PC). To be honest, I don't know how they manage it, day in, day out.

Mark VC