[password] rachel25
[position] 45 50.200n 011 26.370w
[status] On slow passage, Cabo Verde towards France.

Ana would disagree with this but I am not usually one to share my health issues with others. However, it has to be said that my guts have been giving problems over the last couple of weeks with quite a lot of, well yes, lets get to the point, farting.
Last night I was on watch at 0230 and decided enough was enough, and plucked the Ship Captain's Medical Guide from the shelf. Well of course, I had none of the symptoms described, so I moved on to other conditions. It provides detailed instruction on many , ranging from athlete's foot to childbirth, to what to do with a dead person. All very interesting. It may have been the heat (I was dressed in full waterproofs) or the gut problem, or the subject matter, perhaps a combination of all three but all of a sudden I became aint and the next thing I knew I was climbing up from the floor. Hmmm. Thought I'd better tell the medic.

Ana, the medic became very attentive, and having checked me over, sent me off to bed, with dire warnings if I were to get up and do anything - apparently complete rest is necessary.
This morning she appeared, without her uniform unfortunately, but with her stethoscope and her aneroid sphygmomanometer (AS), looking very business like. She needed to measure my blood pressure.
Two hours later, we had to accept that we had failed. Of course we read the instructions. "First find a pulse in the elbow of the arm you do not use much". We could feel a pulse just above my right elbow. "Listen to the pulse with the stethoscope". Ana is deaf. The boat is plunging through the waves with pulse-like swooshing noises. We finally identified it above the miriad of other sounds. Then "apply the band around the arm and fix with Velcro". That was an easy bit. "Pump up the AS until the pulse stops and then 30mb more". We pumped, the band constricting my arm, we continued pumping and my arm felt less and less as if it belonged to me. No movement on the dial. How much more pumping can an arm take? The medic noted that the pressure gauge had been in two pieces in its box. In fact she pulled it apart showing me how it had been in the packet! I noted the message in the case warning that once dismantled the gauge would require re-calibrating by a specialist!
Hmmm. We looked at each other and just by our expressions, agreed that neither systolic nor diastolic blood pressures were more important than lunch.

[speed] 5.0 knots
[heading] 010 degrees true
[weather] Wind E 15kts. 1.0m waves. Sky 100% cloud with drizzle. Baro 1017
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