Fizz day 9 10.15 UT 16:27N 34:34W

Fizzy Logic
Ciaran Geoghegan
Tue 4 Dec 2007 17:01
Day 9 Tue 4th Dec 2007.
 
Last night was a bit of a let down, gribs had forecast the wind to drop to 10-12 kn in fact he wind varied from 2 to 8 knots from approx midnight to about 5 min ago, there were showers throughout the night making things quite damp.
 
In general the weather is warm and wearing shoes is not really on, this however can lead to at least one nasty situation as I discovered last night in the dark. We were 1-2 miles away from a vessel which appeared to be a fishing boat judging from the lights and a flashing light some distance from it which we thought might be a dan buoy, which are sometimes used to carry transponders. Anyway, we were sailing along and I said to Chris that fishy smell must be coming from the boat upwind from us, so we all agreed on that. Later, I got the smell again and at the same time was standing on what I thought were heavily soaked ropes. It was just a little too soft for a rope so I got my torch to see what I was standing on. I was'nt a rope but a very compressed flying fish  which had been mushed into a variety of body parts, head, fins and gooey bits.
 
Last night we were just setting up for dinner in the cockpit after a late afternoon guitar recital from Chris when we saw another yacht approaching us, we waited to see what it was before eating and discovered it was a beneteau 47.7 from the racing fleet which we passed ahead of. Hopefully thats a good thing for us.
 
Back to now, we are waiting for the proper trade wind to establish shortly today and we will be back in business. 30 mins ago the NE trades were blowing from 280M. Tim is currently steering and Chris and Kevin are sleeping.
 
We have done nearly 1350  miles to date which is approximately half way, we are hoping to tuck into some nice trade wind reaching for the second half of the trip.
 
Hopefully there will be more news tomorrow.
 
P.S. I saw a bird this morning and dont know what it is, my ID book I bought before I left is not great. It circled the boat about 12 times and made an attempt to land on a spreader but decided against it. It was about the size of an egret and flew in the same way with its neck folded back, so if there are any twitchers who know what it is pls mail me, I've seen it in other books but cant remember its name.
 
Bye.
 
PM addition, wind came up bit and we put the assy kite up, brilliant run 14 - 22 kn apparent wind with boat speeds between 8 and 9.5 kn. (Hexy time Moss).