DAY 9 (Sunday 22^nd Nov)

Today was to be the day of the ‘Big Turn’. Having punted pretty much south west from Lanzarote for 1,000+ miles, we hang a gentle right at 8.40am to head due east. Our course sees us ploughing along between the 19^th and 20^th parallels, with Antigua directly in our sights (a whisker under 2,000 miles away).

But today is also a Sunday, which means the skipper feels it necessary to double up as ship’s chaplain.

“Right you lot. We may not be able to cleanse our bodies properly,” he announced. “But we can certainly cleanse our souls.”

For a moment I feared we’d be expected to line up on the foredeck and belt out For Those in Peril on the Sea. But Captain K’s Sunday Service amounted to no more than playing Mozart’s Requiem on his iPod.

The soaring music had a soothing effect on the skipper - a man who attends church regularly on dry land, for some very, very good reasons. His cherubic – if hairy – face radiated peace and goodwill to all men.

“Ahhh, what can you say about old Wolfgang Amadeus, eh?” he sighed.

“The toilet’s blocked again,” I ventured, before pegging it up the steps to the relative safety of the cockpit.

There followed a volley of expletives that can only be described as imaginative. In a mere moment, St Sinan-at-Sea had become the Millwall FC women’s enclosure. To borrow from Wodehouse, Captain K was not easily confused with a ray of sunshine. Fortunately, Calm Colin was quick to the scene and within 45 minutes the problem had been fixed (although fans of All Creatures Great and Small - familiar with James Herriot’s dealings with the rear end of a cow - will understand that fixing it came at a heavy price).

But Captain K was still smouldering. “If this happens again, I’m closing down C2 and we’ll have to use C1,” he barked (I’ll leave you to work out the code, but suffice to say the ‘Cs’ refer to our two toilets on board).

“But if we open the door to C1 all the potatoes will fall out,” someone pointed out. The skipper was no longer listening, though. Something had caught his eye on the starboard deck.

“It’s that bloody flying fish that walloped Kit last night!” he yelled. Captain K was right. Six inches or so long, with distinctive wing-like fins, it was a flying fish all right. Riga Mortis suggested interrogation was pointless so, after being given a stiff talking to about hitting innocent teenagers while they’re trying to furl in a genoa, the fish was hurled back into the ocean. (see picture)

Having previously thought Kitkat’s assailant had escaped justice, we were pleased he had in fact remained on board to breathe his last. But something didn’t quite add up. Just one more question, as Columbo might say. How did the fish end up on the starboard deck? Kit’s testimony referred to a ‘glancing blow to the temple’. While the lad’s head is almost certainly filled with concrete, that still suggested a port side landing for the airborne aggressor. Hmmm.

The spray hood (pulled down for most of the voyage) provided the answer. There, tucked beneath its port side folds, lay another flying fish. And this one looked as guilty as sin. Like his starboard side cousin, he too would never again skim the surface of the Atlantic like an aquatic pied wagtail.

OK, so we’d nailed the wrong fish in the first instance. But we’d got the right guy in the end. The guilty fish looked like the bullying type – bulkier than the wronged starboard fish and with a meaner look in its eye. It also had much bigger fin-wings – which had remained nicely splayed after the collision with Kitkat’s size 2 bowling ball head. Death must have been instantaneous. After an innocent couple of minutes of us pretending he was a Lancaster bomber (the fins really do look like wings), the flying fish then flew his final flight, arcing from port to starboard across the sun before nose diving into the Atlantic. Justice, however rough, had been done.

It being Sunday, the skipper had promised us a roast for our supper, with a choice of chicken or chicken surprise (the latter being a plate of vegetables without chicken). Sadly, the rough seas ruled out the roast, so we remain worryingly long in the potato futures market (the FSA is already investigating our cornering of the Spanish poultry market).

Instead, we had to slum it with Lancashire Hot Pot. Out of a pouch. It tasted surprisingly good (well, OK), even if it was tricky to identify its constituent parts.

“How long did you cook this for?” asked Kitkat, perhaps unwisely. Captain K gave him a look that suggested he’d be walking the plank if we had one.

“I heated it through,” replied the skipper, “as per the instructions.”

“But when was it-“

“Look, it was probably cooked by a bloke in Wigan three years ago for all I know. So either eat it or throw it over the side.”

We finally tried to play Scrabble as darkness descended. It’s one of those fancy travel sets. We couldn’t get the box open. I give up.

RWD

www.justgiving.com/atlanticoceansail