Onboard Update from Escapade return delivery 5/7/13 at 5.36pm

Back in the Southern Hemisphere

So- we crossed the equator at 1140 this morning - no champagne, but a round of ship's grog & a toast to King Neptune. It crept up on us: Even after a scintillating bit of mathematics by Skipper, calling on Mr Pythagorus, we crossed 20 mins ahead of the estimate. We are Smoken'! Following a pitiful 42, 68 & 66 nm/day for the past 3 days, achieved mainly by using the squalls that came our way, the breeze finally kicked in yesterday (100 nm); and we've clocked 141 so far today. Escapade has kicked up her heels & is having a ball, under a #3 and one reef. It's a great feeling to be blasting along again - but it was a tricky climb from the galley to the nav station & the keyboard does not want to sit still (not to mention trying to use the head... no, really best not to mention)!
We used the last of our fresh supplies (actually there are 4 onions - carbonara tomorrow!) last night - polish sausages (vacuum packed), potatoes, sweet potato & out new favourite boat veg dish: cabbage, onion & peas (were dried ones) with a balsamic/honey glaze [caramelise the onion in butter/olive oil; add the finely sliced cabbage & sweat until the cabbage is soft; add the reconstituted peas & some balsamic vinegar & honey: yummy! We do this at home, sometimes with bacon, when we don't have fresh peas, coz frozen ones aren't nice on their own.] This afternoon's dinner will be the last of the turtle stew that we vacuum packed before we left Feshaiulep. After that it will be pasta carbonara a la boat, then a selection of 'Easy Meals', which are pretty good - much better than tinned stuff, and they last much better too. The cans go rusty in the damp lockers & the labels are very difficult to read now! Oh! I forgot the bananas. I don't know what variety they are, but they're better than the ones we get at home - the skins are thin, and even when they look (over)ripe, they're stil firm, sweet & delicious inside! Robert has tried mashing them with some fruit juice & rum - nice but a bit lumpy! Also, at Feshaiulep, we cooked them in honey with fresh lime - delicious on their own or on pancakes (or even with breakie cereal if we're desperate to use them - although that option won't float now because we used the last of the cereal this morning! Eggs & bacon are stil plentiful, including some we got in Osaka - little packs with 5 slices (of the really good stuff with no rind & very little fat). The Japanese LOVE packaging - Everything seems to have at least 3 layers of packaging - not such a bad thing in this case, as the bacon is still good.
It's a very domestic blog today... Oh, we saw another ship last night! - well, not a ship exactly - we saw some blurry lights in the distance and the little AIS triangle on the chart plotter - it didn't get close enough for the detailed info be displayed. Otherwise pretty much no signs of life apart from the odd bird and a very large (insert appropriate collective noun) of dolphins with whom we crossed paths on Sunday morning, just after Skipper had gone off watch. And something took a bite of one of Skipper's lures and pulled out a few hundred metres of line - but that's as close as we've got to a fish since Feshaiulep.

Ok, time to abseil back down the galley and extricate the turtle stew from the recalcitrant fridge, which I've just turned back on, to see if it has decided to start work again, lazy thing.
Mrs Skipper out.