Atlantic Sky

PASSEPARTOUT
Christopher & Nirit Slaney
Wed 15 Dec 2010 20:09
There are some things you learn at various stages of life that are unforgettable.
 
For me, one of these has been the saying,
 
Red sky at night - sailors delight
Red sky in the morning - sailors take warning
 
We have been in Atlantic waters for exactly two months and the sky has never looked the same twice. But one thing is certain and constant, each evening at sunset the sky is definitely red, and every morning I look out over a sky which is umm, red! Should be be delighted or fairly warned?
 
The sky is always very big and clean; we haven't seen an airplane for days. The 360 degree horizon is clear and sharp endless.  Looking west you see one type of cloud, face east and it's a different cloudscape altogether. Perhaps by the time we get to the Caribbean we shall have learned what weather is being signaled by the different cloud formations.
 
Each day brings its own little adventure. On Tuesday Dec 14th we had lots of dolphins swimming along right under our bow. For the first time I saw a baby dolphin still connected to his mother.  Could it be that she was swimming along while giving birth, or is this how the young ones spend their first few days?
 
We finally decided to try our luck at fishing. 
Sure enough the rod gave the promising sound and we got really excited, we could almost taste the sushi. It was a small eel, really unpleasant looking and we didn't feel like eating it at all. Back to the meatballs and rice
 
Today in the morning there was very little wind. Chris wanted to stop the engine so that he could have better reception on the radio. We used this pause for a mid-ocean swim, cleaned the boat with buckets of sea water and did some work on the spinnaker halyard.
 
Than came the whales, so many of them!  Luckily we saw them after our swim. Now I wonder that if they were very close to us while swimming,  what did they make of the unfamiliar white mammals in the water?  The truth is they looked so lazy that they probably couldn't care less!
 
600 Miles from the Canary Islands, 200 more to go before we reach Cape Verde, 100 miles on engine so far.
 
Darkness is falling, soon we'll be having dinner and then start the night watches.
 
Nirit
 
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