28/11/23

Sorry it’s been some days since the last update. There has been a lot going on!

Firstly, we have passed the half-way point from Cape Verde to Grenada. 1103 miles in either direction, and about 500 miles off the mouth of the Amazon. This in fact happened a couple of days ago, and at the time of writing, we now have just under 700 miles remaining.

Continuing from where I left off, after hauling in nothing but seaweed on our fishing lines for days, we finally got a bite. The first fish on line since we left Cape Verde, it looks like a decent sized wahoo, and then the bugger stole our rig. The line snapped just shy of the wire leader and the fish swam off with a rather fetching new lip piercing made up of expensive lures and weights, all laboriously constructed by yours truly. Not to worry though, we put the second line out, and next thing you know, we’ve got a fish on the hook… for a short while, before it too swims off, this time snapping the monofilament right at the base. It sounds like other boats have been having similar luck. Galatea inform us that 80% of their fishing gear has been confiscated by the fish. Nusquama on the other hand are pretty pleased with themselves and their freezer full of fish, but the game’s not over yet. We have a trick up our sleeve. We still have the monofilament line from reel number 1. We still have enough wire, weights and hooks for a rig. The only thing we’re out of is lures. Time to get creative. We now have a set of sea witches made from retired rope, whipped in the middle and frayed at either end. Let’s see how smart those pesky fish are now!

Fishing lines are not the only thing to have been failing around here though.

In the middle of the night, happily cruising along with the auto-helm engaged, mum and I were enjoying a spot of stargazing. I popped down below to do our hourly log entry and just as I sat down at the nav table, I felt the boat veer wildly off course. I called up to make sure mum was on board still and got an affirmative noise, but without having worked out exactly what had happened, she was unable to give me an explanation. Essentially, the instruments are not intended to be run for a week solidly without being turned off. Eventually they decided that they needed to reboot and restart, so they did so, without any warning. Thanks to mum’s quick reactions, she had the boat under control again before anything happened, but it definitely caught us a little off guard. Just as you think everything is going fine, something always happens!

Another reminder of this occurred the next day too. The wind had been gusting over 20 knots all day, but had just started to come down in the afternoon. We decided we could do with some more sail up, but as we hoisted the kite and went to reef the main, Michael noticed that the sheathing was rather concerningly bunching at the block by the base of the mast. It was only thanks to him catching this before it went too far that allowed us to resolve the issue without it becoming a major problem. Somewhere inside the mast, the halyard had experienced some friction, which eventually caused the sheath to snap, leaving only the core to hold the main. We decided that we should cut the tip off it, allowing us to shuffle the sheath off the whole thing with some rope based peristaltic teamwork. This then meant that we could attach a mousing line to the core, before then dropping the main, bringing the mousing line the whole way through the mast, ready to be attached to a new halyard. Once rethreaded, we reattached the main to the new halyard and hoisted again. As you can imagine, I was very glad that this was achieved without having to be hoisted up the mast.

As a way of making peace with us, the ocean delivered a pod of dolphins to say sorry for all the trouble. Until this point, the occasional dolphin or two that we did see had seemed rather aloof and camera shy. They would turn up for just long enough to start recording them and summon the crew before they’d mosey off thumbing their noses at us. This time was different. They came out of the sunset, under the sails, off our port bow, jumping out of the waves four abreast. There were maybe twenty in total and they played under our bow for the best part of ten minutes, surfing the compression wave and showing off their synchronised swimming routine. We really had a chance to enjoy the show as they kept looping back for more. Eventually they started to peel off, until the last two stragglers were left getting their last laps in. Finally, with a wave of a flipper and a slap of a tail, they too went off to catch up with the rest of the pod and we were left alone again, in a great big blue sea, watching the sun set with a renewed appreciation for the incredible journey we are on.

I had this all written out for posting this morning, but then we had some action overnight that slipped in as a last minute submission.

On mum’s watch (and it’s always mum’s watch when something happens) just before dawn, what appeared to be a tiny speck of rain on the radar turned out to be our biggest squall yet. I woke up at 45 degrees in my bunk to the sound of “Thirty… Thirty One… Thirty TWO… Thirty THREEEEE!… Michael I really NEED Giles up on deck right now!”.

I rolled out of bed - quite an easy feat given the current angles - and bounded up on deck. Soon enough all of us were up there. I guess it’s hard to lay in bed feigning ignorance when you’re having to cling onto the sheets to stay in.

We eased the main down and put two reefs in to get the power out of the rig. Once the boat was a little less unruly we had a chance for a chat and thought it best to go all the way to three reefs before everyone went back down below. There were still ominous looking black shapes moving through the pre-dawn gloom.

By the time all was said and done it was time for my watch anyway, so here I am, sitting with mum, drinking a cup of tea, with my eyes firmly fixed on the clouds behind us watching for trouble.

Hugo