Our position at 10:00 BST Tuesday 17th July.

48 04 North.
005 46 West.

Our 24 hour run from 10:00 yesterday to 10:00 this morning was 142 miles giving us a better average of 5.9kts. We have 50 miles to go to Camaret.

I’VE JUST DONE MY LAST NIGHT WATCH WAHOOOO I’m not going to say ever because I don’t know what’s going to happen but for the foreseeable future any way. We are just going to do day hops up the French coast for the rest of this trip.

When Bill got up yesterday we shook out the reefs and sailed for the rest of the morning but the wind died at lunchtime and the engine was back on at 2.30pm. At least we sailed for another 24 hours to save some fuel but there’s no more wind forecast. The westerlies keep moving back, they are forecast to arrive at the end of this week now but too late for us. The twin headsails are still out to catch the little bit of wind we have got to give us an extra knot or two but if we turn the engine off we just flop around. Bill is putting our last 80lts of fuel in the tank at the moment which will get us into Camaret.

We discovered why the EV1 (Raymarine gyrocompass) has been giving us such trouble yesterday. We have an emergency light that turns on when you turn it upside down, it sits in a pocket in the cockpit but probably not more that six inches away from the evil one on the inside. We think the light has a magnet in it because when the light was moved the heading magically corrected itself having been out by about 40 degrees most of the journey!

I had the most magical display of dolphins at sunset last night just as we were crossing back onto the continental shelf. There were big ones and small ones, some were jumping clear out of the water. They enjoyed playing in our bow wave for well over an hour. I’ve never seen any thing like it. Usually they play for 20 minutes or so then disappear but these were there well after the sun had set. I think they were welcoming Camomile home.

Not having seen any shipping for most of the journey, this morning I saw lots. They had come out of the English Channel round the traffic separation zone at Ouessant and were heading for Finisterre on the Spanish coast and vice versus. They were heading north/south – we were going east. Hedgehogs and motorways come to mind. Fortunately they could all see us on their AIS and were able to alter course to go round us.

So this is my last passage blog. I’m looking forward to getting in and giving the boat a good clean, inside and out, and of course I’ll be off to look for a washing machine. We’ve been to Camaret quite a few times and 9 years ago there was a washing machine there, they had better not have moved it.

I have a bottle of Prosecco left over from Bill’s birthday party chilling in the fridge to celebrate our Atlantic crossing plus we will also celebrate crossing our north/south outward going line. We left Camaret on 4th May 2009 to head south and now we are back.

The website link to facebook is working now but it comes down via an email so I can’t see facebook. I’ll look forward to my messages when I get in.

All’s well on board.