Voyage to Verde Islands - Day3

Stargazer of Southampton
Susie and Adam (both think they are skipper)
Tue 14 Dec 2010 08:38
14:12.10, 23:07.28N 18:36.00W
 
We had to motor in the end yesterday until 2 in the afternoon - although by then there wasn't a lot of wind we wanted a break from the sound of the engine so put the sails out and managed to make some progress in the light winds we had.    Yesterday was good though for having a bit of a relax - the sea was very calm and as the winds were light jackets and boots could be replaced with shorts so we spent the afternoon drifting slowly along and reading our books in the cockpit. 
 
Adam has made an excellent curry for Tuesday's dinner (trying to cook food ahead of needing it so that if the weather does get worse then we will in theory always have something ready to eat) - haven't had a curry for ages and it smelt so nice that I had to stop myself from 'testing' too much of it from the pan.
 
Mid afternoon a big pod of Dolphins appeared, looked like the Atlantic spotted type that we saw around the canaries, they played around the boat for abuot 20 minutes or so which seems to be about the 'interest span' of our boat for dolphins.  This group had a number of calves in it (I think young dolphins are called calves) of various sizes - one was only a couple of feet long and sticking close to its mum and there were a few others about half the size of the adults.  I thought that in theory Dolphins swam at the bow of boats but never hit them - one of them managed to bump into our boat (or the boat bumped into it).
 
Overnight last night the wind picked up steadily and we've had 20 knots from about 2 in the morning onward - as we were going downwind we carried full sails for a while but then started reefing at every watch change to keep things a bit less exciting at night, the forecast is for it to calm down today so hoping that will happen although still 18 knots now so we'll wait and see.
 
We are now half a mile from another boat we know and have been chatting to them on VHF this morning, nice to have another boat to have a chat with.  They said they have taken a photo of our boat against the rising sun this morning so hoping we can get that off them at some point - it will be nice to have a photo of our boat sailing right out here!