First of all, I’d like to apologise for this being only my second entry in over a week. It’s incredible how awkward it is writing on this thing when everything’s rocking all over the place!

Well, the first week has been mixed. Upon leaving Gomera, the weather was exceptionally quiet. That’s not a bad thing necessarily, but it means you have to work for every single mile.

However, after that everything picked up, and I was flying along on huge waves making good progress in the right direction. At one point I even hit 8 knots!

But then it changed. The wind gradually moved around from coming from the north, to coming from the south. The lasr couple of days have been very hard work, and I even had the sea anchor out ove night to stop me being blown back to the UK. Hopefully it’ll change soon. It must, surely?!

Then there’s poor old George. On about my third day out, I climbed out of my cabin narrowly avoiding a small black ball of fluff. This lump turned out to be a small bird named George (you could tell by the way he cocked his head when you looked at him).

Well, he wasn’t in a very good state, so of course I welcomed him onboard Pete, and placed him out of danger from my cumbersome feet. And there he remained for 48 hours, falling back into the footwell every now and again, not appearing to get any better. But then, tragedy struck.

Perched on the side of the boat, surveying the majesty of the sea, suddenly a gust came along and lifted George up. His weak flap of the wings was not enough to bring him back to the boat, and he landed in the ocean, just yards from the safe haven that was Pacific Pete. Just managing to keep his head above water, he slowly drifted off into the distance and there was nothing I could do.

Surprisingly it was quite a sad moment. I hope he doesn’t blame me for it!