Good days run of 158.7nm noon to noon. Lost a bit of time overnight in light winds or would have been much better. That seems to have been a bit of a pattern.

Had some excellent sailing yesterday with the Code 0 and main in mainly reaching conditions averaging about 7 kts in glorious sunshine. With the seas being relatively calm it makes life onboard very pleasant and quite easy to move around the boat and get things done. 

Going into yesterday evening I noticed the loom of some very bright lights on the horizon to the west which by my thoughts should not have been there! It looked like a small city and was quite spooky, it certainly kept Doreen focussed while she was on the 21.00 to midnight watch. I guessed it must have been a fishing fleet and was proved correct when about 8 of these boats suddenly appeared as AIS targets on the plotter between 5 and 20 nm away. From their names I would guess they were all Chinese and a long way from home. The largest was 78m! They disappeared from the screen during the early morning but have just popped up again and we are sailing though a fleet of about 13 of these really large fishing boats. By the looks of it they are just drifting with the engines off at the moment. I suspect they fish at night and stop during the day. Not sure what they are fishing for but possibly Tuna. We have just passed one boat about 1/2nm away and it looks quite old and scruffy. It would be nice to clear these before the evening. At the moment we can see some boats about 24nm ahead of us. 

The wind went light overnight and backed so it is more from the ESE. We poled out the Jib to windward with the Code 0 and main set to leeward we are broad reaching with all the sail we have. Even in this light weather we are managing to keep up to about 6 kts boat speed. It must be quiet because Doreen is on lunch duty today!

It is nice to have some time to do some reading and writing while the weather is calm. Speaking to a boat that is about a week ahead of us they have had much more wind and told me that their toaster and microwave flew out of the galley onto the floor! I ask you - who needs a microwave and toaster on a yacht 🤨 For sure that will not happen on Saphir.

Enjoy the remaining part of your long Jubilee weekend - tomorrow’s blog will be about the boat and why we chose it.

STOP PRESS:- Doreen just called me on deck and a whale surfaced about 150m away going in the opposite direction. Not sure what type of whale but it was close enough and big enough for us to be pleased it was going in the other direction!!

Cheers

Saphir