DAY 17 (Monday 30th Nov)

Up bright and early at 6am (Kitkat emerged a little later - see picture). We ran the spinnaker up after breakfast to make the most of the lighter winds and all went well for four hours or so. Then a band of squalls began to dominate the southern horizon, like thugs gathering on a distant street corner. We decided to switch to a more stable twin foresail rig.

Cravenly, we tiptoed past the squalls (having turned the music off and hidden in the saloon so they wouldn’t notice us). Strange things to behold, squalls. These looked like grey-black mushrooms against an otherwise blue sky, as they dumped millions of gallons of rain into the ocean.

The crew of Sinan were demanding a different sort of shower, however. “Going German” (using a ‘magic’ teutonic soap and buckets of salt water) had been fine up until now. But as we settled into week three of the voyage, there was a call for a slightly more sophisticated approach to ‘bath time’.

Captain K stuck his head into one of Sinan’s over-packed lockers and, after removing a can of Stagg’s Chilli con Carne (“That’s supper sorted”), a hand drill and a copy of Burke’s Peerage, he emerged brandishing a shower head and hose.

“I’ve looked at our fresh water situation in some detail,” he announced. “And the maths is really quite hard to do. Anyway, I think we all deserve a no-holds barred, fresh water man shower off the back of the boat.” Kitkat immediately grabbed The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and made for his bunk.

(It should be noted at this point that the boat does, in fact, have two onboard showers – both of which are filled with provisions, sail bags and – it’s got to go somewhere – our rubbish).

Plugging the hose into a fitting on Sinan’s stern, the skipper went first – and promptly scalded himself. There are two dials by the fitting, one of which has lost its cover. The other was blue in colour and marked with a “c”. Cold, surely? But Sinan’s a French boat. So maybe chaud? It wasn’t at all clear. But something else was absolutely clear: there are more beguiling sights than a naked middle aged British man howling in pain, framed only by the Atlantic Ocean and the western skies.

After much more yelping (with Colin being used as a guinea pig), a tolerable temperature was reached just in time for my shower. I enjoyed it so much I nearly fell in the pond a couple of times.

As clean as we’d been all trip, we put our feet up for the rest of the afternoon. Captain K’s attempt to read out a list of “jobs that simply must be done” was greeted with a chorus of “get lost, Pugwash”. “Jack Aubrey wouldn’t put up with this,” he grumbled, returning to his Patrick O’Brian book.

Mention of Jack Aubrey reminded me that we were soon going to have to eat Russell Crowe (who plays Aubrey in Master and Commander). Our Russell is, you’ll recall, an orange with a grumpy, bearded face drawn on it. We’re down to two oranges plus Russ. Only when all the oranges are eaten are we allowed to tuck into the dangerously scarce 42 litres of orange juice we’ve got stored in the fridge, shower cubicle and – for all I know – the reserve fuel tank.

We did, indeed, enjoy Stagg’s Chilli con Carne for dinner – cooked by Kitkat. After which, Captain K made a quite disgraceful play for the crew’s affection following the faint whiff of mutiny in the afternoon.

“Cherry crumble and custard, anyone?” he said sweetly. Easily bought, we scoffed the lot.

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