Day 26

Sadie
Mon 1 Jun 2015 16:08

44:17.000n 35:37.140w

 

Distance to home:  1517 miles

 

Distance run today:  139 miles  

 

Course 080

 

 

 

We’ve been eating sushi … And you know what that means !

 

As the skipper say’s “it doesn’t get much better than this”.

 

Domestic

 

It’s blowing 25 knots now and it was 30 knots overnight so the sea has had time to build up nicely.  We are taking the waves on the port quarter in order to hold a course for home and it’s like living in a washing machine with a vicious corkscrew motion.

 

Overnight we passed 8000 miles of Atlantic Ocean sailing on Sadie since she left the UK in 2013.

 

Breakfast was a challenge this morning and Jez managed to crack an egg onto his bare feet rather than into the frying pan which was something of a moving target.   

 

Most things are nailed down after 3 weeks at sea so we remain fairly organised down below and the seas are becoming bigger but more organised as the day progresses which is much easier to live with.  Wills was in the cockpit in full “party gear” (oilies) this morning but it’s now safe in shorts and Tee shirt.

 

Wills had his second close encounter with a tanker this morning. The AIS system is pretty clever and can determine what your closest point of approach will be to any other vessel in the vicinity. Twice on Wills’ watch this has now read ‘0.0nm’, pretty much telling you that if you don’t do anything about it, there will be a collision. Both times we have fortunately been able to negotiate with the tanker to slightly change their course in order to give us comfortable room to pass as they continue to plough through the seas into wind.

 

The bread making has been stepped up a notch and there was a suggestion from Tim earlier that there may be need to take a Mary Berry style approach to judging each loaf, watch this space.

 

For anyone interested in Wills’ latest book, Tom will be pleased to hear that he has decided to tackle ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’, that’ll probably see him to the UK now…

 

 

Sailing

 

This has been pretty simple really.  The wind has been from behind and building so all we have had to do is drop one of our pair of headsails and leave the furling genoa poled out to starboard with uphaul and downhaul led back to the cockpit.

 

We then adjust the sail area to suit the wind and maintain about 6 knots.  This is easy enough for one person to do on night watch and if necessary we could furl the sail away completely from the cockpit.

 

 

Natural History

 

OK on to the meaty matter of the day. 

 

Picture the scene. It’s about 4pm, Tim has disappeared for a kip in the “cave” (a small dark cabin under the cockpit seats).

 

The sun is shining, it’s not yet too windy and Wills and Jez are sitting in the cockpit, looking aft with book in hand.  Tom Petty’s Greatest Hits is on the stereo, I can’t remember the track but for the sake of artistic license let’s call it “The Waiting”.

 

Then the line starts to run off the reel with the familiar rapid clicking noise. 

 

We have a drill for this but it all goes out the window as we are all in the wrong places so Jez grabs the rod, Will grabs the tiller and both yell for Tim at the top of their voices.

 

Tim arrives and reluctantly, Jez hands over because:

 

1.                   It’s Tim’s turn to land a fish

2.                   It’s Tim’s boat and he calls the shots

3.                   If you have ever been around Tim when there is a big fish to be landed (remember those days Ricky?), then you will know that he gets a bit enthusiastic and you really don’t want to get in the way.

 

Wills grabs the gaff, moves the boat to windward and drops the halyard for the small headsail.  Jez goes forward and grabs the pole and mess of sail lying on deck, and all the time, Tim is reeling in his fish.

 

It’s fighting from the outset which is not what Dorado’s tend to do so we have high hopes and after 5 minutes we see the flash of silver and confirm those hopes.  It’s Tuna for tea!

 

Will gaffed our catch and 11 lbs of angry muscle was dropped into the cockpit in a pool of blood.

 

Vodka was poured into the gills to kill the beast and all was going well until Tim threw a bucket of seawater over the fish to clean off the blood and better admire his prize.  This brought the tuna back to life, thrashing around in the boat and keen to get away.  Tim settled matters with a single blow from a heavy lewmar winch handle which is why you will see photos of us holding the right hand side of the fish to camera.

 

There is a tradition on Sadie that the eye of a tuna, which is huge and a beautiful glassy blue colour, is eaten raw.  Ricky started this on our trip out in 2013.  Sadly this tradition has ended as there was no appetite for such madness this time.

 

We did have a sushi starter for tea though and have 4 really good loins of tuna in the fridge.  If the boat stays steady enough we shall be eating the first of these tonight.

 

Tim had optimistically downloaded a fish identification document to his tablet and we reckon that we have landed an 11 lb Blackfin Tuna.  Dave S, can you check we are in the right range for these?

 

 

Today’s responses

 

Lizzie – Glad Faye’s back, enjoy Guides.  Who won BGT then ?

 

 

Frank – Rig and underpants fine at this point.  Inclement weather threatens both but we reckon we’ll be all right.  Thanks for Juno and Black Pig updates.

 

Jason – anything you want to tell us about Thirslet ?

 

Dave P – Our keel’s fine, how’s yours doing ?

 

Joe – Hope you start to feel better before you drive your mum mad.

 

Linda and Don – glad you’re your following us ,see you in September.

 

Tom – Glad to hear you are busy as ever, no change there. I’m sure the roads were empty at 4:30 am, how convenient seeing as I’m sure you took the Audi ;) Thanks for the update and good effort once again on the bike ride, I can see now why you didn’t ride back this time. Pretty cool that you saw Reece bowl Chris Gayle and a bugger about England players mucking about but good really that Lancaster is having a zero tolerance policy. Well hearing about all the BBQ’s back home I have been craving some of that but now we have fresh tuna life doesn’t seem so bad, (what’s the price of tuna at the moment we have 10lbs of it in the fridge…) Ice cream sits pretty high with all of us for cravings and actually some green vegetables would be nice too! I’ll have to put a request in with Mum when we get a bit closer to home. : )

 

Bye for now

 

 

Sadie