Mike Jones’ – Latest

Day 13

At a couple of minutes before 3am this morning Mylene was knocked out of her seat by a wave, she dropped her oar and as she tried to recover it the blade swung towards the front of the boat, as the water caught the oar it bent the steel rigger on the boat and snapped the oar lock clean off the boat, the oar is now floating somewhere in the Atlantic.  Following this Matt decided it was not suitable for 2 people to stay rowing so the lads stowed the oars and everybody retreated to the cabins.

Day 14

I have just come off my 1100 – 1300 rowing shift and I am now getting some lunch ready, today it is Porridge with strawberries (800 Kcal).  My appetite has faded in the past 2 days so  I will force feed myself if I have to as I need to keep the energy levels high.  Normally I try and get my emails and blog done during lunch while I wait for the water to boil (that’s what I am doing right now).  Once I am done I will take my food back to the bow and eat that while chatting to the lads rowing.  Then I normally retreat to the cabin to do some puzzles and catch 4 winks before I am back up at 1500 to row.

Day 15

We are also fully back into routine by now and those of you following the updates will know that I am now on lunch.  I get back to oars at 1500 until 1700 and then it is dinner time.  Depending on how hungry I am I sometimes eat a full meal other evenings I just have a snack.  Once I have eaten I fill in my diaries, one is a personal account of what I get up to during the day and what has happened on board, the second is a special account of the trip for my sort psychologist, Aine McNamara.  She has asked me to record specific information each day and she hopes to analyze the data when I get back to see just how mental I am !!

Day 16

Progress has come to a halt, the southerly winds we were being promised for Friday have kicked in and we are now on sea anchor.  I suppose it had to happen at some stage but it looks like we could be on it for the next 4 days! The funny thing is the weather is actually not too bad the sun is shining and we have a nice warm southerly breeze of about 15-20 knts and the calmest sea we have seen in over a week. 

Day 17

Unfortunately the satelite email system on the boat isn’t working too well due to a massive low pressure system about 600 NM north of the Sara G. Therefore there was no update today. Phone contact was made with the boat and all are well. The downside to the low pressure system is that they have had to drop the sea anchor and they are moving north rather than west, although they aren’t going that fast. This was expected but is a dissapointment to the crew as they were on target and hoped to break  a 40 day crossing earlier in the week. It is expected that the sea anchor could be down until Tuesday. ….

Day 20

Apologies for the slight gap in posts…Long story short, The Sara G was on Sea Anchor for the last few days going backwards (slowly) and then the email on the sat phone broke down. The Great news is the Sara G is on the move again with an expected target arrival date of February 28th in Barbados. They are really pushing and making up for the lost time on Sea Anchor. The other reason for the absence of posts was that as soon as they started rowing again, and got the sat phone email working again, a freak wave hit the boat and managed to wet the Laptop which could have been curtains for the daily updates.
Thankfully all appears to be working again and we are hoping for a MASSIVE post from Mike tomorrow.

Day 21

Today was a great day, after what was the worst night on board so far.  We got slammed by a big storm during the night, wind were up over Gale Force and probably gust force 9 most of the night with swell in the region of 7-8 meters.  James an I got seriously thrown around in the bow cabin and had a god laugh as we would in turn get flung across on to the other , apologizing all the time although the actions were completely out of our control.  Funniest of all must have been opening y eyes to look across at James and we both went airborne and levitated above our bunk for about 2 second before slamming back down as the next wave crashed in. It is probably the closest I will ever get to being in a zero gravity environment.

Day 22

Great to have the cabin back to myself for sleep last night, even of it was only for 2 hours at a time, it is so much cooler and you can stretch out properly.  Also nice to the back rowing and making some miles although with a cross wind we are not making great miles.  We should be back close to where we went on sea anchor within about 24 hours and then finally back on track for Barbados.

Day 23

Back in the groove today after a couple of days in the 2 on 2 off, feeling good and the boat is gathering speed as the wind comes around behind us at last.  Chilly night last night but the past couple of days have been roasting. Good news is the laptop is back in action after Matt and Pedro took out the faulty part and rewired the mains on to the circuit board.  Now we just need to be super careful with it.  Great morale to have it back but no fishing today.  We have decided to reward ourselves with fishing only after we make 75 miles or more in a day.

Day 24

Just a quick update to say we are still making mileage in the right direction but not much else going on really.  The days are hot, back up around 25degs Celsius today and the nights are a little chilly, but still in shorts though.  Today should be around the half way point in days as we now expect to cross in around 48 – 50 days but the half way mileage point will not come until next Wednesday.  I am really looking forward to that as we will finally have only 3 weeks to go, for the past 10 days I have been telling myself we have 3 ½  weeks so it feels like we are standing still. We are also each stock piling any orange rations to ensure we have enough to get u to the end without having to delve into the contaminated green packs, the thought of them make me feel ill.

Follow Mike and the rest of the crew at www.atlantic5000.com