Or whatever the saying goes. Alas, it is not true. After trailing a line for around 800NM we have not caught a single thing.

I’m (Rob) doing the blog today, and I wanted to start by pointing out that either there are no fish left in the Atlantic or that we can’t fish.

One of the last things Bill said to me before I left was “look after the Spinnaker Rob, she’s an old girl”. Well what can I say? She’s still up there! One or two new pinholes I have seen but the old lady wont give up. We had another fast night, On my watch I was honing the fastest mode I could - adjusting the pilot to “leisure mode” (more responsive) and giving it one degree here or there. The Australian Cricket commentators would call it (Aussie accent) “eking out the bearest of margins”.

Traffic has increased – we had a British Warship just SW of the Scillies and fishing boats are a plenty. We are making good progress towards the Southern Scillies TSS before we turn the corner slightly to head for the lizard. All being well and depending how this wind holds, we should cross the finish line around 4-5am tomorrow morning.

One slight downer is that the Watt and Sea has broken. The downhaul line has chaffed through and so we have to replace the line (a brand new one was put on in Lymington before we left). If we still had 1000NM to go we would probably get in the water to do it, but as we have only around 74NM to go we will sort it in Falmouth. In the meantime, we can use the engine and burn some diesel :).

Tonight brings dads inauguration to freeze dried food. I’ll start him off gently with a Pasta Bolognese in the bag (one of the finest) and let him report back later.

Hoping we can push hard to the end now – will try and get some sleep to allow a full on night of trimming.

Ciao for now,

Rob & Tim