25:41.81N 20:16.30W
California Blue
Mark Bashforth / Jayson Bashforth
Tue 27 Nov 2007 18:57
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Blog nr. 2 from California Blue - The Day of the
Dolphin 27/11-07
Hello Everyone!
Picking up from my blog from yesterday (Monday
afternoon) we tried our hand finishing but to no avail. We will have to try
again later. Still hoping to catch that big dorado or tuna :)
The weather last evening was decent but the wind
dropped and was coming at us from all directions making it difficult to cover
much distance. We enjoyed a great chicken stir fry meal and dined in the
cockpit. The sky was clear and we could see many different star constellations.
Mark and Elliott were feeling a little queasy with
the biggish swells so we took it easy. Mark went to bed early to make up for the
lack of sleep from the night before and to be fresh for his watch. Elliott and
Spencer stayed up with Jayson and kept him company during his watch. They
enjoyed a spectacular moon with lots of VHF chatter in the background. Not many
boats around though.
Jayson joined Mark at the end of his watch munching
down a few bowls of honeynut cheerios and planning how to conquer the main task
of the day - deploying the Parasailor by using a spinnaker pole. After breakfast
we cleaned up all the dirty dishes (not a task for the faint hearted on a
sailboat)
We got Vic out of bed early (only having had 3
hours sleep since his watch finished) and started making preparations, running
lines etc. By late morning we were ready to give
it a go. And we did. Unfortunately after 3 attempts we were unsuccessful in
getting the Parasailor to fly directly downwind with the aid of a pole.
Frustrated we reverted to flying it off the bow spirit which is
giving us good performance between 110-150 degrees in wind angle. At the
time of this writing we are doing 7 knots in 9 knots of wind! There is only
one other boat on the horizon who also appears to be flying a Parasailor.
They don't appear to be a match for California Blue though as we seem to be
gaining on them. Otherwise there are no other boats for as far as the eye can
see. Just water everywhere.
And then out of nowhere the surprise of the day -
we were greeted and entertained by a pod of dolphins. There must have been over
100 of them swimming on both sides of the boat and jumping up and down in
front of the bow. The boys were so thrilled and took lots of pics and video. We
were all impressed with such a friendly display of nature. Amazing
creatures!
This afternoon Elliott and Spencer did some
homework and Mark caught up on some Cal Blue email. We also got the BGAN
system running on the first try setting it up in the cockpit giving 230kb speed
to surf the internet (read check Lakers scores) and make a few phone calls.
Jayson laughs at Mark telling him that California Blue is a floating internet
cafe. All jokes aside, apart from that damn # {CHANGE TO AT} !* MPDS problem on the Fleet
55 all communication system are (knock on wood) working perfectly. Special
thanks to Howard and Tim, our new friends and cool dudes from the
Satcom Group who fixed all our problems before we left Las
Palmas.
The time now is 18:00 UTC and we have sailed some
345 nm in 53 hours. An average of 6.5 knots per hour. Hoping the Parasailor and
Chris Tibbs weather forcasting will bring us more speed and wind.
And now the answer to the question everyone is
waiting for - dinner is beef potato burritos ala Vic.
Stay tuned. More excitement (Hah!)
tomorrow.
<Momentary intrusion from El
Spencero>
Hola to all of the brave readers rummaging through
Captain Marco's ARC novel. This would be Spenceezy yoyo taking over the
blogging reins for ya. Just wanted to give a quick what up to everybody and let
you know that all is well. It seems like Skipper (Mark) wrapped everything up pretty in depth but I just
wanted to say how amazing all of those dolphins were. It was basically
impossible to look into the water and not see dolphins, they pretty
much stormed the boat and it was definitely an incredible experience.
We have one boat in our sites and thanks to our lovely parasailor we're gaining
on him quite steadily.
Hope all is going swimmingly, much love,
Spencer
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