I've therefore continued the practice of taking 20 minute catnaps on that berth when ON Watch and as a consequence over these last two nights, I've got more sleep then, than when OFF Watch!
During our Watch handover at 0200, Mick reported what looked like a rather disturbing equipment failure. The sea toilet was not pumping out properly. Now I know hardened sailors will consider this no hardship at all and indeed many of them prefer the "bucket and chuck it" approach to their toilet. Personally I've never tried it. The thought of remaining safely perched on a bucket in the cockpit whilst doing a crap with the boat rolling - sometimes quite enthusiastically - from side to side and then having to finish the job and then having to dispense with the bucket's, lets face it, rather unsavoury contents without mishap, does nothing to ease the spirits!
On top of all that, Sharon is due to join us in Barbados on 2nd January and she's not known for her fondness of "roughing it".
We decided to tackle the job in the daylight and hoped neither of us would need to use the facility before then!
My Watch passed without incident but we slowed considerably in lighter winds and probably only averaged 3.5 knots during most of those 6 hours. Towards the end of my Watch the wind did pick up and we were back to an average of 5 knots or so.
Looking at the forecast for the weather ahead it looks like we should be able to average around 5 knots for the rest of the passage and so our best ETA is still 28/12/23.
After I'd snoozed for an hour at the start of my off-Watch, with some trepidation we tackled the loo.
At first sight the evidence was that one of us was suffering from a bizarre attacke of kidney stones. Bizarre, because how either of us could have passed a stone of such generous proportions - without noticing - indeed without being reduced to absolute agony, one could only wonder!
On closer inspection however, the Mate declared that the object lodged in the pump's exit valve was in fact a chick-pea. This was preventing the valve from closing fully, so reducing the outlet pressure to near zero. Once the offending chick-pea was removed and the pump re-assembled everything worked normally.
However, whilst we no longer had a medical puzzle to solve, a puzzle there still was. That chick-pea must have been in the pump for months because we had not consumed any chick-peas since leaving Pasito Blanco. Indeed, it was while I was there on my own in September that I last used chick-peas in a meal. Why and how did that one chick-pea make it that far? What had it been doing all that time? Why hadn't it blocked the valve before?
I guess we'll never know. Of course the Mate took great satisfaction in ruling himself out of having any responsibility whatsoever for the incident! "I would never swallow one whole", he announced, with his usual air of absolute conviction and smugness!!
Tonight I cooked the first of our non fresh meat meals. Corned Beef Hash. It was OK. Better was the second Bread and Butter puddings of the passage. I didn't make it quite sweet enough but it was still pretty yummy!
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