I'm in the doldrums

Today I am on mother duty with Jo (doing legs 1,2,3 and 4), this role involves us doing all the cooking and cleaning for the day and tonight we both get the chance of 13 hours of sleep.. uninterrupted!

At the moment I am sitting down in the saloon (only for 5 minutes!) with the music on full blast after a big lunch. The menu so far has included, for breakfast; pancakes and for lunch; macaroni cheese, homemade sesame and poppy seed bread and rolls, all gone down well so far, tonight; a curry of some sort? Jo and her culinary skills are much more imaginative than mine, but it always turns out great.

Our current position is 1st with Great Britain in 2nd. They are further south but quite far east. We have been having some varied and sometimes frustrating sailing these past few days, from good South easterly winds, to sitting for a few hours in squalls with sometimes no wind or wind sending us in the wrong direction! I think at a few points the other day we went round in circles! Other times we have been hit by sudden gusts from nowhere and within minutes the wind increases from around 10 knots to over 30 knots. Our code 1 which was up one time during this gust can only manage up to 15 knots so we were VERY lucky the sail held and didn't rip! But this is the sort of weather to expect when we are near and in the doldrums. Today I can tell we are near the Equator, there is little wind and a scorching sun, making it difficult to stay cool below deck and on deck, the other day I spent my off watch time trying to find a cool place to sleep, trying the sail locker (which does not smell too good!), the Saloon, on the deck, on the floor next to a fan and then in my bunk, with little success. As long as the boat is moving- in the right direction- I'm happy! 

Yesterday, we decided to name our 3 spinnakers, so now when we put the Code 1 up, we will 'Bring out Bruce', the Code 2 we will 'Welease Bwian' and the Code 3 will be 'Unleash Thor'. It makes it a bit more interesting when hoisting them! Overall life on board has been a fun routine of sleeping, eating and sailing, and depending who gets out of the doldrums first, they could be the first over the finish line in Rio, so for now we are trying to get the boat to go as fast as possible with the wind we have been given.