Yesterday dolphins, whales, turtles and albatrosses totally avoided us - we saw none of them, just sea. Highlight of the day was food: marinated tuna from last night’s catch for lunch for Paul, Sue and Dan but bacon for the non fish eaters, Jonathan and me. Later we had freshly-cooked fruit-scones for afternoon tea and then delicious pork chops from Dan. 

It's full-moon and it rose last night as a huge yellow ball over an inky black sea just after 8 pm. Beautiful.

We're still sailing SSW (course about 200) heading towards the Cape Verde islands to avoid strong SW winds to the west of us and to find favourable winds. Last night we averaged 6kts but today we've had to motor as the wind has dropped.

This evening we nearly caught another fish. We had almost landed it into the boat when it escaped, so it was clearly bigger than the one caught yesterday! 

It was a surreal evening. At about 8.30 pm we crossed the Tropic of Cancer (20 degrees north of the equator). Dan then put his laptop in the companionway, plugged it into the stereo system and we then sat under a full moon watching Jack Nicholson in “As Good As it Gets” . A brilliant film in the most amazing location - a sail-in rather than a drive-in movie. And on a personal note, if I could have added a bottle of wine and my wife, Eileen, then the occaision would have lived up to the film's title perfectly.