Unsurprisingly, Blue Moves + Thyme drifted away from each other during the night, so that come morning, she was nowhere to be seen. Rather more worrying, VHF contact seemed to be beginning to break up, suggesting that maybe we were losing each other. And of course, without radio, there’d be no way of finding each other again. However, the respected navigators made educated guesses at the best courses to take, and we were still together at lunchtime when the noon shots gave what we hoped was a more accurate fix. From then on, we both held what we hoped was an intercept course. To everybody’s amazement we came into each other’s view in exactly the right spot at exactly the predicted time. Big pats on the back for Dick + Val. This all meant of course that we could resume our inter-boat games tournament. I gave Dick another whopping at battleships, tho’ he was able to gain his revenge by beating me at mastermind… the bum.
During the day, when we weren’t scanning the horizon for itinerant yachts, + Val was busy altering my canvas trousers, so that I didn’t look quite as much as tho’ I’d just climbed out of a brass lamp; while I was copying down the words of various songs from Doug’s tapes – anything to increase the repertoire. The evening meal was very tasty – liver and bacon. Tonight we’ve decided to try to keep in touch with Dick, to save messing about in the morning. Listened to the second part of their chart show on the radio this evening – living in the past even more: Kenny Loggins, Santana, Crosby Stills + Nash. + America. My god, you’d think it was 72 not 82. Coincidentally, it was followed immediately afterwards by a local show with the NX top ten, + the difference was remarkable, the NZ list being far more like Britain’s, more looking forward.
Remarkable how one will seize on any opportunity to relieve the boredom of life at sea, a role Dick was fulfilling in admirable fashion. And that the game of choice should be Mastermind, which in its Wordle incarnation has achieved cult status nowadays. Rather pompous of me to be quite so condescending about American music, but that was too often my way. Still is, probably.
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