Sailing at last - but not sure how long for… .

Kingfisher 2013
Peter Smith
Fri 6 Dec 2013 17:54
Midday on 6th December - apologies for the blogging gap. Yesterday was my "mother watch" which occupied me for much of the available time (although I did also manage to get a record 11 hours in my bunk before it got started). There really isn't much to report from those 24 hours really.  We set out the poles in anticipation of wind today which finally arrived at around 0500 this morning. We created a monster lure (code named Sammy Senior to avoid confusion on board but I have to say, he does not look very much like any squid that I have ever seen). In sequence, from the tail upwards he has a purple and blue squid lure, complete with tentacles, a large steel washer, a length of reinforced hose pipe housing our only remaining free weight, a brilliantly carved wooden fish head with two more 3 pronged hooks designed cunningly to look like fins.  I think a picture is in order to give you the full brilliance of the design….



How can we fail to catch the world's largest tuna with a lure such as this?  Unfortunately, I can think of quite a few reasons…..but we are all up for the job. The next cunning plan is to attach this lure to the strongest fishing line we can find, tie that to a long piece of bungee cord, tie that to 30m of dyneema line and run that through the stern anchor roller and onto one of the main sheet winches.  The rod is not up to it, even with my beautiful new reel.  However, getting the beast on to the boat should we catch one will be quite amusing - time to get out the gaff hook, a large knife and the vodka in the gills treatment. At least if it then gets away, we can drown our sorrows without delay.


We have been sailing ever since 0500 today but the wind is still only just strong enough to fill the head sails. The swell has been a bit confused from the massive low North of us so, as soon as it drops below 15+ knots (which is happening quite often at the moment), the roll of the boat knocks the wind out of the sails and creates noisy and expensive sounding cracks as the genoa re-establishes itself. We have done all we can to minimise it; we are heading South to try to catch a few more knots of wind but it remains a constant source of background irritation (for me, at any rate). It is, however, much, much better than motoring!  The motion of the boat last night was particularly designed to prevent sleep - every 7th wave picked us up and rolled us just a little bit further than our well programmed brains were expecting. The last few unexpected degrees of the roll cause an involuntary reaction to brace yourself that only extreme tiredness can ignore. The solution is therefore to get more tired - OR….find some wind.  We would like to do the latter.

Sunsets just keep on coming though…..we are having a wonderful time.