Day 9
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31:24.000n
64:06.000w Distance to home:
3050 miles Distance run
today: 120 miles Course
350 First thing today is to
say hello to an old friend of Sadie.
Good to hear from you Ricky. By the time we get to
Domestic
Two items of news on the
domestic front. One was that we stopped
the boat at lunchtime yesterday for 30 minutes. There was no wind at all and the sea was
flat calm so we went for a swim. We
know that we are in at least 4000m of water from the chart but our echo sounder
gives up at about 200m so we can’t tell you exactly how far we were from the
seabed. We did try to look though
with masks and snorkels and it was clear and deep enough to give a sense of
vertigo as you hang there gazing downwards. It’s amazing that we
catch anything when towing a lure as the visibility underwater is pretty much
endless. It must just be a snap
decision from a fish as it sees the bait flash across their
path. We also did a couple of
laps of the boat in the interests of exercise. The other was dinner
featuring the massive Dorado that Will hauled in a couple of days ago. He did the honours as chef and the
result of his labours was Baked Dorado with potato and carrot mash and a spicy
tomato sauce.
In keeping with the fish
itself, portion sizes were impressive and the crew went on watch happy and
full. What’s left will be
plenty for tonight’s meal which we will eat cold. Sailing
With the exception of our
break for a swim, the engine was on for 24 hours until we turned it off and
started sailing again at Peace reigned for the
night but at about 9am the wind died and we drifted into a bank of heavy cloud,
rain and ultimately a thunderstorm. Having a 40 ft metal mast
on a flat sea makes us nervous when lightening is about so we unplugged the vhf
and some of the more delicate electronics.
Received sailing wisdom is that these should be put in the oven for it to
act as a Faraday’s cage and protect them from harm. Our bread was baking in
the oven at the time and local priorities became obvious when we left this in
place and put the satphone, gps and vhf in a locker
instead. Natural
History Feeding the Great Skua a
couple of days ago may have been an error.
We now have a pair which visit us just after dawn each day and pass close
over the cockpit. (We are careful
at this point as one has already narrowly missed Tim with a little “present” of
it’s own). Their energy saving
technique is interesting in that they fly in hops. Landing on the water , close to the boat
before watching us sail away then taking off and repeating the
process. When they get nothing
from us (the flying fish seem to have dried up so there have been none on deck)
then they disappear after 20 minutes. Todays
responses Em – hope
Joe – Enjoy the bowling
with you class tomorrow.
Bye for now
Sadie |