Welsh boys inspire!

Well where do I start, the temptation of course is to go straight and talk about the Welsh win, but I’ll be good and bore you with some rowing news first.Every day now feels pretty much the same, all 63 of them. We row, we eat, we sleep, we row, we eat, we sleep. Over & over & over again. To add to the monotony of it all we now have our daily squall, regular as clockwork between 10 and 11am (Herdip caught it badly today). After a few days of good mileage I guess we shouldn’t feel too aggrieved that we are now sitting in the same place thanks to strong northerly winds, just trying to maintain our position above 17 degrees north.

So now ….rugby!
At 16:30 I duly sang “Hen wlad fy nhadau” and prayed that the strong winds we had here were not impacting on my boys in Twickers! The Jameson reporters were complete stars and sent me an update at every exciting moment of the game, Ian just about managed to leave out any bias from the commentary too! So when the Welsh tries started to come in I started jumping up and down (as much as one can do in a cabin that’s not high enough to sit up in even!)… I then desperately tried to remember all the words to Max Boyce song (…and they were singing, Land of My Fathers, ar hyd y nos) to wait for final whistle & confirmation that our boys had won! HOORAY!!!!!!! They had done it! I was ecstatic!!!! Da iawn fechgyn! I just soooo wish I could have been there to celebrate!

Two things happened at that exact moment. We were hit by a big freak wave which hit us beam on, threw Herdip off her seat and flooded the deck big time (not good!) …BUT …on a positive side, and there’s always a positive … Herdip while lying waist deep in the blue stuff was struck with a moment of genius thinking ….Now as you know we’ve been without compass light for a few weeks now, which has made night rowing very difficult (practically impossible!) and it was really getting to us. Well Herdip’s amazing, fantastic & awesome idea was to remove the L.E.D light wired in our forward cabin (just storage for random things) rewire it along deck and attach it to compass! So that’s what we did!!! Our boat builder might have been cringing if he had seen our attempt (duck tape all the way!) but hey presto - it works!

We were slightly annoyed that the wind hindered us being able to put her fine idea into its full potential, and settled for a second nights sleep in the cabin. Woken up this morning by our SeaMe bleeping I stuck my head out of the hatch door, only to see one very bright star in an otherwise very dark night. When the SeaMe started to continue bleeping widely out of control I decided it was time for a second look …….duck it……the “bright star” was now attached to a great big yacht, merely a few meters away and heading straight for us! Herdip jumped on the VHF and I grabbed for the flare. It was so close that I also started shouting – hoping that there was someone on deck … seconds later (felt like hours) we get a response over VHF, they had seen us, and swerved out of our way! Our legs were shaking! In the “pleasantry” conversation that followed, they asked “Are you in a dinghy?” …sometimes I feel like we are!

And so with batted breath we wait for the adventures of our ninth week on the Atlantic to unfold … roll on Antigua (PRETTY PLEASE!)

P.S HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAVID! HOPE YOU HAD A GREAT DAY, LOVE & MISS YOULOADS. MAY ALL YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE.