Halfway party

Around the Atlantic: ✔ Next stop: Circumnavigation
Ron Noordhoek
Mon 31 Jan 2022 01:55
Sunday January 30
15:04.611N 043:51.788W
Celebrating halfway turned into an amazing afternoon!
It started at noon when we had our glas of champagne. According to some weird American custom Ian, John and Nicole put a splash of orange juice in their champagne. And they drank it too… weird people those Americans.

John made a paper hat for all of us. I was the boat’s dad:-)
Then Ian sang a song for us on the foredeck. Just at the moment where he didn’t remember the lyrics any further, the spindle of the fishing rod went crazy.
We caught a fish! We stopped the boat and wheeled it in. That wasn’t easy so we let it go for a bit just to tire it. It turned out to be a huge Mahi-mahi. John hooked it and then, just when he got it on deck, it managed to free himself and he was gone … hopefully we didn’t hurt him too much and it’ll recover from any wounds.
We had another drink and then we had lunch. John made us amazingly good sushi rolls and sashimi from the fish we had caught earlier. With avocados cucumbers, spring onions wasabi and of course sojasaus. we had the most fantastic lunch!!
Afterwards we all sat on the bridge enjoying the sail and then the spindle went crazy again!
This time it was a yellow tail tuna. Luckily it wasn’t too big and this time we caught it for real.
Alex and Ian ate it’s hart for some tradition reason … the res of us enjoyed the freshest sashimi you can imagine.
Some time later Nicole some some very big shadows in the water… whales!
They kept swimming with us for almost an hour. They never really surfaced but from the bridge we could see them clearly. Since we never really saw them coming up to take a breath, it might have been whale sharks?
In any event it was an amazing experience!!

Some time later Alex noyicrd a squall coming our way. Especially for John and Nicole, that was a real good experience. Alex explained what he saw and what to look for and then we reefed the jib. Not long after the winds picked up and it started raining. 10 minutes later it was gone and we could shake out the reef.
About half an hour into my watch I noticed some dark clouds and could see the rain. John and Nicole were still on deck so now I could tell them what to look for at night. We reefed again and just before the rain hit us the winds significantly veered.
Since the autopilot was set on windvane, I showed them how the boat could take care of itself. Again it lasted only for 10 minutes or so and it wasn’t a real squall, just a local shower. Nevertheless, I could show them the dynamics of this kind of systems. After it passt, the winds backed and the boat was back on course.
All in all, this was an amazing afternoon. All things happening on a single day, a special day even, halfwayday.
I’ll always remember this day, as we all will.
It was a fantastic day!!