Huw on 09-12 watch and rain starts 20 minutes in. It’s relentless all day, which poses another problem – our bed still leaks! It finally stops when Bernice goes on watch at 2100. Not fun especially as we don’t have our oillies, having sent them home back in December! On the upside the rain isn’t cold. Just annoying and not the tropical sailing we we signed up for, well not until nearer Canada anyway!

A big list of jobs gets done today. Very productive all round. The oil leak in the engine gets fixed and the oil filters changed. The rain leak in our cabin gets fixed. We make Cerviche and curry for dinner. we even manage to transfer the GRIB files from the boat laptop to Richards laptop where it displays all the info he wants in his programme.

On the down side a baton in the mainsail (a long rigid strip through the sail at equal distances all the way up to enforce rigidity into the sail) comes lose late in day which we remove for now till there’s ample daylight and a plan to deal with it. It’s about this time as well that the boys notice the sail cloth coming away (tearing) from the clew ring at the foot of the mainsail. This will need attention when we get access to a sailmaker, probably Mexico.