Indian Ocean - Day 11. 19/10/17

The strong winds have blown themselves off to somewhere else, leaving us rolling along a bit too slowly at 5 knots in a 15-20 knots wind. With the wind almost astern we have the big genoa poled out to port and the staysail to starboard. The mainsail stays out of the way rolled up in the boom, as otherwise it would slat back and forth in the swell. It now looks as though we will arrive in Rodrigues at about midnight on the 20th of October, and will need to anchor outside the reef until daylight (and the Harbour Master) allow us entry.

In the calmer conditions today, and in the light of the slight uncertainty in the steering we got out the emergency tiller, beautifully chamfered and varnished by Stuart, and attached it with the cronky bit of metal supplied with the boat through a hole in the aft deck. It seemed to work fine, although the coupling has too much play in it and we will have to dream up a remedy for that.

The sky is blue, the seas are too and, whilst Justin is busy stitching up the man overboard retrieval system that was ripped off the rail, Mark is at the helm and I am devouring Dickens.

Having never, ever, read Dickens I had downloaded his entire works free of charge onto the Kindle. Running out of books to read I drew a deep breath and started on A Tale of Two Cities.

This gripped me entirely and I read it in 24 hours, on watch and off. What a story! Dickens style is a bit too flowery but his characters are gripping and he doesn't spare the horrifying vision of The Terror in Paris.

Enthused by this I went straight on to The Old Curiosity Shop, also done in a day, with some extraordinary characters and twists and turns, but too much verbose sentimentality for me.

But I confess that such complete immersion in the books left me feeling rather otherworldly and a bit sick!