Day 5 - Closing on Madeira (still)

Clearlake II
Graham van't Hoff
Tue 8 Nov 2011 11:11
Well it’s that old sailing phenomenon – the closer one gets to the destination the slower you go! We’re now at position: "32:58.80N 15:48.78W". We had to put the engine on for some time the night before, but also last night for a few hours as the wind died away. Now we’re sailing again beautifully, if not in quite the right direction – oh well!
 
Before that though we’d had a F5 on the nose, forcing us to tack our way towards Madeira. We tacked south in a bid to avoid developing rain storms, which broadly speaking worked. The night sail was wonderful -  see attached pic of the moon and star overhead. This was accompanied by all kinds of music blaring its way out into the Atlantic, from Country and Western to 70’s, 90’s etc. Felt like a party – Byron and I stayed up to 3 am before getting the other two up! Just missed the margaritas.
 
Earlier in the day we had our first catch – one of two, both tuna – both seemed highly attracted to squid bait. The first was a bit small so lived to fight another day; the second is in the fridge as filets waiting to be cooked up for lunch today. You can see Byron hauling in in one other pic. The final one is of the four of us this morning – you can see the sun’s now out and, since then, we’ve all had to strip our layers down as it’s really quite warm (just like London?!).  We just completed our second man over board drill – I waited to make sure everyone was busy this time! But getting much sharper.

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