Day 5 / 18:00
Rhapsode
Thu 18 Sep 2008 17:49
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29:43:00N 12:40:00W
18th September 2008.
Last night was one of those very special occasions.
There was no horizon and it was impossible to tell where the sea ended and the
sky began. It was as though our watery world had closed in on us. The sea continued to be glassy calm and as night fell we
found ourselves going through a patch of bioluminescence. The waves made by
the boat glowed in a bright fluorescent whitish-green. The
sparkly sea around us coupled with the black of the night was quite ... ghostly.
The stars came out, the moon rose and the sea still
sparkled. And the grand finale was a small pod of dolphins swimming
close by - causing the sea to sparkle under the surface. Streams of glowing
bubbles following the dolphins.
Magical!!
It all came to an abrupt end when we ran into
squally weather - long, low thunder, sheet lightning and all the rain you could
wish for (or not!).
The boat turned into an ocean greyhound on
Michael's watch - regularly doing 8 plus knots and thoughts turned towards
a nice early arrival and what we could do with that extra day. In the euphoria I
was even woken this morning with a cup of tea in
bed. How good is that?? And no crisis in sight.
Did I say that?
About 2 pm the engine started to cough and choke
and lost all power. We turned it off and diagnosed fuel blockage. We changed
filters and cleaned out pumps and generally complained about being sailors and
not engineers. Still, after three hours of messing about we eventually started
it up again. It roared into life and we are again thinking about that extra
day in Lanzarote, albeit three hours shorter than it was.
Or was that the mistake we made
earlier?
We'll tell you tomorrow.
P.S. I didn't properly explain about our swim
yesterday. We tried to send a couple of pictures of us in the water before
sending yesterday's blog but we couldn't get them through. Anyway, it was a
lovely warm morning, there was no wind and only a low swell to contend with...
and the sea looked very inviting. So in we went. One at a time just in case...
It was glorious. We took pictures and Michael drafted up a tale of the mutinous
crew taking over the ship and making the captain walk the plank!
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