Ascension Northwards - Day Twelve 03 43.296N 036 21.581W
Aurora_b
Mike and Liz Downing
Fri 25 Apr 2014 19:38
Had a different type of problem today. Could see lots of turbulence out the back and checking it, the hydrovane rudder had picked up a huge mat of weed. There's lots of it on the surface and we've not seen it this bad before. The drag factor must have been significant, so went fishing with the boat hook to try and get it off. Didn't work well and we had to take the speed right off to get it free. Looks like that will be a regular job while all this weed is about.
Had quite a few birds around us today. A couple of Shearwaters were looking for the flying fish that took to the air as the boat went through the water. They didn't look very good at it and it was quite comical to watch. Maybe 10 fish would take to the air the birds couldn't make up their minds which one to go for and ended up, as far as we could see, not getting any. On a couple of occasions the Shearwaters flew so close to the boat we thought they would hit it.
After a couple of days going to windward, so life on a lean, we've both decided we much prefer rolling downwind!
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