[An Amps correction: as Mick pointed out, the calculations in my previous post failed to take account of the Amps being contributed throughout the day. Once that is done, our daily consumption is in the region of 100 Amp hours a day not the 60 previously stated].
Despite the Mate's, to say the least, rather stormy passage through Round 1, which he survived by a very close reach indeed, it looked as if he would walk away with the crown of Mid Atlantic Baker of the Year 2023 for want of any competition. Then, moments before the competition closed, a messenger burst in on the judges as they were preparing to leave to announce the Skipper had made a last minute entry.
"Poppy cock", "who does he think he is", "well blow me down", "never did like the cut of his jib", "dam scoundrel", "should know better in his position", "what a cove", "I say", "what about my dinner" "I'm not rising to this" "whip him" ... were just some of the responses made to what by general consensus was most unwelcome news indeed.
An emergency meeting was quickly constituted and the Skipper, having, by his actions forfeited his position as Chairman of the panel, was summoned to explain himself. His case was simple there was nothing in the rules preventing him from entering prior to the closing date.
After lengthy consideration the judges were forced most reluctantly to agree and the Mid Atlantic Bake Off - Round 2 formally got under way.
The Skipper, being a lazy Cove had a secret devious plan to wrest the title from the grasping hands of the Mate. He would woo the judges with the speedy delivery of a perfect loaf. Not for him a long drawn out kneedy process, no he would produce a perfect Soda loaf in less than an hour. The Skipper set to with much gusto and a knowing grin as the mate retired to his bunk in despair at this most unexpected development.
But within minutes the Skipper was running into danger. He misread the quantity of flour from his secret recipe and only just discovered in time to avoid foundering at the very start.
With disaster narrowly avoided he noticed that whilst the recipe demanded Bicarbonate of Soda but he only had Baking Powder. Inspecting the ingredients he noticed that the Baking Power contained Bicarb' "so it must be alright" he reasoned. Next he noticed that whole Milk was required but not only had the wretched Purser not purchased any Bicarb' he had also only provisioned the ship with semi skimmed Milk. He made a mental note to flog the Purser once he'd finished. For now he decided, "chuck an egg in, that should do", so he did.
He ploughed on ahead as quickly as possible. Mixed the flour, baking powder and salt together. Added the lemon juice to the milk, let it stand for a minute to turn into butter milk, add the honey, add it all to the flour and mix.
"Hmm, it's a bit bloody runny" he mused, "maybe the lack of scales was to blame. No matter I can just add more flour". So he did. Made the ball of dough, scratched a cross on top and bunged it in the oven for 40 minutes.
It looked impressive from the top, but oh dear it was rather flat!
"Bugger, I'll have to try and hold it down low so they just see the top."
"My word" said the new Chairperson of the panel, Vice Admiral Poppycock, "that looks good, perhaps it will keep us going until dinner, pass it here and let's have a taste". With a sinking heart the skipper replied "but that would spoil it, surely you wouldn't want to do that". "Don't be silly Skipper, pass it over immediately, of course we need to taste it. Ah, oh dear, what have we here, it's as flat as a pancake and as heavy as an anchor." On cutting the 'loaf'; " is it even cooked"?
"Deary me, this really isn't very good at all is it Skipper?" He said and passed it to his fellow judges who proceeded to "tut tut" vigerously, shake their heads in unison and unsuccessfully stifling their sniggers.
"No, no, no" he said looking round at his fellow judges all of whom were shaking their heads "this really won't do at all Skipper. You lazy good for nothing scoundrel, you took the easy option, produced a complete flop (loud guffaws from the other judges) and then had the audacity to try and fool the panel by your artful presentation of this, of this, well, there's no other way of putting it, this unmitigated disaster, this apology for a loaf, this stone. It might be useful as ballast, but it's certainly not fit to eat, I don't think one could even feed it to the crew without risking a mutiny.
Seargant, lock him up. Score? You have got to be joking. Signal the fleet, "Court Marshall Sunset tomorrow, all Captains to repair aboard Bonny".
Call the Mate, then for goodness sake lets have dinner, it had better be bloody good after that apology for a loaf...
And so ended the Squid Games Mid Atlantic Bake-Off 2023. The Mate was crowned Mid Atlantic Champion and his earlier sins quite forgotten.
What happened to the Skipper? Stay tuned....
.........
In other news....
Once solar charging had finished in the late afternoon we placed the Starlink dish in the gimble and switched it on. Within an hour and ten minutes we had achieved a connection and were able to download updated grib files and exchange messages and emails.
Only further attempts will reveal whether this was down to the gimbal or just a fluke.
The gribs showed no significant change from the previous ones - there's still predicted to be an area of very llght winds up ahead which may require us to motor for the last couple of days. Hopefully we can avoid that through use of the cruising chute.
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