Voyage of the Jeanie Johnston/DAY 5:The arrival of dolphins on the port side of the Jeanie Johnston as we head-butted our way across the Celtic Sea brought a bit of welcome relief to the weary voyagers, writes Seán Mac Connell.
The dolphins arrived after a night when we had made reasonable time down the Irish Sea in bad weather with showers of rain and high winds, and just when we thought we had it cracked, the heads (toilets) went down and we were told not to use them or take showers.
I have a personal interest in these heads because I had to clean all four of them as part of the insanely named "happy hour", when the ship is cleaned from top to bottom every morning.
We had been warned when leaving Ireland that because there was a full complement on board we should try and limit the water we used, especially in the showers.
Eddie O'Gorman, one of the other watch leaders, warned us not to be taking "Hollywood showers". Yesterday we could not even have taken a "Bollywood shower".
Dixie Nugent, who is on O'Gorman's watch, said it did not matter to him as he was too bloody busy to be dirty. We all feel a bit like that because most of us who have signed on for the trip of a lifetime did not fully understand we would actually have to work our passage.
Now that the official shock has passed and the weather is easing somewhat, people are getting into the rhythm of sleep deprivation, storms, getting wet and being cold.
There are only two former voyagers in the group, Niall English and Niall Cronin, both Dublin-based, who knew what to expect.
The rest include hoteliers, businessmen, farmers, retired civil servants, technology experts, lawyers and publicans, and one woman, Kelly Noonan, who is travelling with her father Michael from the US.
There was less good-humoured endurance, one suspects, on the original Flight of the Earls boat 400 years ago, when, running short of food and drink, The O'Neill used his relic of the true cross contained in a cross of gold to end the storms.
"The portion of the cross of the crucifixion and many other relics being put by them in the sea trailing after the ship gave them great relief. At the end of that time, much to their surprise, they met in the middle of the sea two small hawks, merlins, which alighted on the ship. The hawks were caught and were fed afterward."
And speaking of feeding, our chef is a genius. He is an Englishman called Mark who looks like a younger, cut-down version of Pavarotti.
He specialises in good food out of a small kitchen and the singing of sea shanties, which he shared with us after dinner on Wednesday evening.
We sleep in small cabins off the main saloon. In each cabin there are two bunks. We are served a lot of beans on board here and I heard one complaint from a fellow traveller who described his cabin as a gas chamber.
Everybody including the captain eats in the main saloon and a smaller one adjoining it. Space is tight and it can be difficult attempting to sleep.
However, no one on board is complaining, nor would we want to swap places with anyone ashore, even though we smokers are getting very jittery as we know our stocks must soon run out, with the estimated arrival time now at least a day longer than we thought.