Passage to St Helena Day 5
Misterx
Mon 10 Mar 2025 20:22
10/03/25
8:30 pm
Day 5
Atlantic Ocean
DTD : 1,042 NM
The Albatross was around today, about lunch time. I think he is camera shy, I watch it for a while and he comes quite close and then i dive down to get my camera, by the time i come back he is always too far away for a good shot... never mind, i will persevere! Maybe tomorrow.
Just spotted another catamaran, Hanna, 15 m long, 8 m wide, barrelling down at 10 knots, we are only doing 6.5! And Ian just made way for him earlier on his watch apparently, the cheek of it! They come in here, with the whole wide Atlantic ocean around us, miles of empty water and they come within 5 miles of you, and you have to make way for them, despite the fact that you were there first and that you are much smaller, and you only have one hull!! Honestly!! Not only that, we are now off course by 40 degrees from the course we want to do, and we'll have to gybe again once he has passed us, to get back onto it!!! And to cap it all, there won't be no room for us in St Helena with all these catamarans in the bay!! And there probably be no Guinness left in the pub for St Patrick's day!
We had another good day today, although we really thought we would get rain this morning. The skies where grey and heavy with it, no sunrise to speak of to go with my breakfast, but by the time i came back up at midday, we had brilliant sunshine and wall to wall blue skies, without a cloud in it. The wind has strengthen during he day but not too much, still manageable. But then again we always shorten sail for the night so if the wind pipes up I don't have to wake Ian up, There is no way i would be able to do it on my own, not anymore, much to my distress. So that does slow us down a bit, which is why we are always the first to go and the last to arrive anywhere!
Ian is really good value on a long passage... today's pearl, he tried to liven up his coffee, got a bit boring for his sweet taste buds, so he thought, tell you what, i'll add some nutella to it, it will be lovely, well, it would have been if he had dissolved the instant coffee first and then added a dollop of nutella. Instead, what he got was a mess of chocolate paste studded with grains of instant coffee, sunk at the bottom of a cup of boiling water that no amount of stirring would melt! So he ate the chocolate mess studded with grains of instant coffee, then drank the hot water... can't be wasting any of it, and he liked it too!!! Heston Blumenthal eat you heart out!!! You have now competition on the weirdest food combination someone can come up with!!
And on that bittersweet note, I better go back to keeping an eye on Fat Hanna, who needs all the space in all the water of the Atlantic ocean, in case she decides she wants to be in the spot where we are and we have to give her way again!
M