Day 9 Noon Tuesday 1^st December

It’s a big and lonely place out here on the ocean. We have VHF radio to contact other boats but this only has a range of about 50 miles. No good once the boats have scattered after day 1 or 2. Some boats have long range radio which allows them to keep in touch with other boats world wide – we don’t.

So it was a surprise when the VHF crackled into life with a foreign accent saying in English – “Can anybody hear us on VHF”. Skipper responded and we were soon chatting to Victor on the Norwegian yacht Katrina. They hadn’t seen another boat for 5 days and were feeling lonely. We could just see each other on respective horizons.

We swapped stories. They were another ARC boat making for St Lucia. There were 4 on board and they had seen two whales. That’s about two more than we had seen. But we were ahead on the fishing front as they hadn’t even tried. So 4 – 2 to us. Once I explained that a mahi-mahi was also called dorado Victor got very excited and couldn’t wait to get started.

We carried on chatting for a while and then lunch was ready so we said goodbye and promised to have drink together in St Lucia. Suddenly the ocean didn’t seem quite so big after all.