After a mistake on the day of our last blog, we now know what day it is! Also as scribe I had a severe telling off from James for missing his name off (I won’t make that mistake again).

Speaking of James, we must let you know about the football shirt war that has been taking place between James and Cookie Dave. It all started when Cookie placed his Aston Villa shirt in James’s bunk. James then put his STOKE CITY shirt in the upper mess. You can all see the friendly rivalry that is taking place, so much so that at dinner the other evening, James had jam sponge and Stoke City ice-cream not Aston vanilla (you do have permission to groan).

Various instruction sessions and talks have taken place over the last few days, Lesley gave us a talk on weather patterns in an ideal world with no land; Paul and James (not our Stoke one) hosted a session on knots where some of the attendees were busy tying their own knots rather than the ones

being demonstrated.

Tony and Craig gave a very informative talk on blind and deaf awareness and I think most of us were most surprised to be told that only 4% of registered blind people are totally blind.

Alli, Eli and John ventured bravely to the very top of the fore mast and were happily swinging in the breeze, and whooping at their success.

Captain Barbara showed us again this morning where we were and the hope that we may get some sailing done tomorrow, that was after we sang happy birthday for Salisbury Alan.

This is Aft St’bd watch signing off on another hot and humid, blue sky day in the Java Sea: JAMES,

Tom, Lande, Robin, Tony, Peter G, Peter M and Carol.

p.s. the last 45 minutes of our watch have been very testing, Indonesian fishermen think they have right of way all the time and so we have had to manoeuvre the ship hard over three times but all back on course now and handed over to the next watch.