13:02 N 66:00W

World ARC Day 3 – Catching, Pole Dancing, and Slick Stuff

The Captain had been envious of other boats reporting Tuna catches . (the skipper was jealous of reporting of ANY catches!) It was said that morning or evening fishing were more likely to be fruitful ; at 07.30 'tight lines' was the call and a 10kg (well maybe 6kg)Yellow Fin Tuna was expertly dealt with and lovingly filleted for dinner.

We also caught another fish with a big new posh lure bought in St Lucia, but it took the hook clean off the back of the big rubber squid and disappeared back into the blue. We have no idea what or how big it was..... probably a 200 kilo sail fish, which means we narrowly missed a record breaking catch today.

Alas! Neptune may, as Lynda remarked, have demanded a price from Nina . A shackle broke at the end of the Spinnaker pole and the mid guy and down haul fell off. Steve performed minor miracles and some pole dancing of the non-arousing kind on the foredeck. Shackle replaced and after a couple of abortive attempts, with the bow bouncing around, normal service was resumed, with a solid 5-7 knots of speed, and 3 sail heaven.

The ARC briefing told us of the demise of David Bowie . No choice – the I pod played all the Bowie songs we could muster and we reminisced about his great music.

Supper had to be the fish that didn't get away, with a green salad and freshly baked bread rolls, caught in the freezer section of the super market.

Life on board is pretty sedate as we relax into our sleeping patterns and the spectacle of stars at night and the sunrise makes it all very magical.

Sea of Oil (or some other grungy stuff) – this afternoon we passed through a sea of orange oily slick. It was quite distressing, especially as the ocean has been blue and spotless for the most part, save for the odd plastic piece of flotsam. We sailed through it for nearly an hour, sometimes mixed with areas of the Sargasso weed. Flying fish were spooked as usual by the passing of Nina, and soared out of the sea, only to be covered by the surface pollution, and falling back much shorter than their usual skimming and bouncing trajectories.