26th November 5th day at sea

Slipstream Web Diary
Bill Cuthbert
Thu 26 Nov 2009 20:17

Comfortable sail through the night, bit cloudy, occasional big swells

 

Lots of flying fish, amazing flying low over the water, scooting around changing direction. One flew onto the deck overnight. Paul (helming) to Bill ‘I think a piece of paper just bounced off the rear stay’ (though quite where the mad fellow thought that the piece of paper may have come from in the middle of the sea is not clear). Bill eventually went to have a look & found the flapping flying dish & so chucked it back into the sea. That was the most success that we have had at fishing. So far we are in deficit through the day. Mike was our only catch of the day (hooked on one of the lines) as well as this we lost one of the lures, so the fish are winning.            

 

Rich spotted a crescentic dorsal fin, which after consulting the books decided was a swordfish. Didn’t see anymore of him than his fin and he declined to take a look at our lures.

 

Rich also distinguished himself by having a wash for the third consecutive day AND laundering his clothes, offering to do a white wash tomorrow.

 

Now we seem to have established communications with the ARC by email & so Bill & Mike spent some time poring over the positions of the fleet email & putting it into an excel spreadsheet. They were encouraged by our position relative to the other boats, the Baines’ & Nick were discouraged by our position relative to St Lucia: it’s still a bloody long way.

 

In the later afternoon a call from another ARC boat Mandula who have also come along way south and were making sure that there as someone else around. Mikey reckons that they are not too far away & are around the same size so we may have some company for awhile.

 

Paul cooked the last of the fresh meat (stir fry beef) unless you count sausages & so we're on tins unless we can get the fishing to work

 

The wind’s drifted off a little so we hope to be in for a nice quite night

 

 

Breakages the toiler seat (well what do you expect with 5 large males)