Mid-Atlantic swim
Kingfisher 2013
Peter Smith
Mon 9 Dec 2013 23:31
We had a very relaxed day again today - after our mid-morning swim that is. Everyone was wide awake for that. It was a wonderful temperature and a relatively rare opportunity to go fender surfing 1000nm from land and 4000m off the bottom! You will be relieved to know that we did not just set the cameras on automatic - Alex H was actually on board when this picture was taken….
We are very grateful to Vicky's brother for his valuable advice about tuna fishing. We are following his guidelines within the limitations of the kit we have left and are still fully expecting to catch one shortly….we only put the line out for a short while this evening and were not lucky today. Tomorrow is another day!
We were circled persistently by a flock of migrating birds (species not identified I am ashamed to say) who were very clearly intending to hitch a ride with us to their holiday destination. We used a lot of energy keeping them off the boat (it is a real menace to have a group of birds crapping corrosively all over the place for a week) until we remembered the loud hailer function on our cockpit VHF, after which they received a great deal of verbal abuse. Poor birdies - we managed to persuade them to go and look for someone else's yacht to mess up.
My noon sight today was within 12nm - I am liking the trend here. It is very satisfying and fascinating to learn how to use this very fundamental and historic technique to locate yourself. We will start the classes for the rest of the crew shortly (I just need to be one day ahead of them).
Hoping to report cessation of mechanical propulsion by this time tomorrow.