Day 11 to 33:40N 57:25W Wind F4-5SSW 155nm run

I had a Red Bull to wake me up for my midnight to 3am watch, this worked fantastically well right to about 7am so I seemed very indolent today getting out of bed at 11am. Last night Justin saw the moonrise, Louise saw a shooting star, Jim saw a satellite and the dawn and I saw three episodes of 24 - that's the middle watch for you, absolutely nothing happens. The key thing is not to go to sleep because if you do you are pretty much guaranteed a very large freighter on a collision course - at least that's what keeps me awake - along with the Red Bull. By the way, when I say I watch TV on my iPod I am rigorous about still looking around and I really more listen to them than watch.

Just before lunch, Jim and I were going up to the foredeck to do our daily 100 push ups and 200 crunches when a very big group of common dolphins pulled us away and entertained us for a full hour. There must have been at least 30 of them and they seemed to be having a great time playing in our bow wave while we all sat, watched and took pictures. We must have been going at just the right speed in just the right direction for them to stay so long. Louise had prepared lunch and that just sat untouched until they finally left us. It is strange but that's the 10th day in a row that something has stopped us doing our exercise. We are expecting the weather to get a little worse over the next few days so we took advantage of the calm to top up the fuel tank. It took about 190 litres so we have just under 500 left and only ran the generator today to top up our batteries. We also topped up the water using our watermaker. This rather clever device takes in sea water, filters it and puts it under great pressure through a membrane that removes the salt. It then spits the concentrated left over brine back into the sea. Without this we wouldn't be able to consider showers and the whole passage would have quite a different aroma.

Louise wants to learn French for her travels so I have lent her the Michel Thomas course which I used and enjoyed. As we have Jim a native French speaker aboard Louise should have lots of opportunity to practise - except that the lessons are Parisian French and Jim speaks Quebecois. I haven't heard this before and as he mixes it with English I initially thought he was doing an inspector Clouseau impression. Justin has been diligently planning his travels using my "1,000 places to see before you die" alongside his guide books. He has between 7 and 15 days depending on when we arrive and mentioned that he hoped to have time to explore Spain, France and Italy. I think perhaps Justin is suffering fromhaving gone to Epcot and it being easy walking distance from Paris to Rome and Madrid. Jim, Louise and I suggested that he might have a more pleasant trip exploring the sights of Gibraltar (worth 30 minutes of anyone's time) and Spain.

Louise cooked spaghetti tonight. She is adjusting to cooking for four and we have to give her a little latitude. Last time she asked me how much spaghetti to use and didn't realise I meant per person so we were a little short. This time it somehow ended up as a single lump and we actually have pictures of Justin cutting off his portion with a pair of scissors. Fortunately the sauce effectively lubricated it and the whole thing settled out into quite a nice meal - liquid engineering from Buitoni! (For non-Brits, Liquid engineering is the Castrol oil slogan and Buitoni makes spaghetti sauce - and that's it for jokes I have to explain).

Clouds on the horizon now so perhaps not such a perfect day tomorrow.