41:03.76N 039:53.69W

Day 15

Still on a fishy theme, but adding a touch of the miraculous, today we caught a second fish! It was a lovely 8 – 9 pound tuna, caught on the same bait as yesterday. John dispatched it with a renewed confidence, bled it, butchered it, and it is now in the freezer, enough for four meals for the four of us. We did have a little taste last night, just to make sure it was ok and you can’t beat tuna fresh out of the sea. The rod has now been packed away as we have enough for the pot and couldn’t cope with any more fish.

Still on a miraculous note, I have managed to bake a loaf of bread that looks like, well, bread, the sort you can slice and toast and put butter on. It was made from a packet of Rye Bread mix for a bread maker and is the best yet.

I have stopped reporting dolphin sightings, but we are seeing them two or three times a day, not really taking any notice of us, but often coming quite close. We were surprised last night when the boat was sitting in a flat calm sea, before the engine went on, by great sighing sounds and splashes by the side of the boat. It was too dark to see anything, as the moon hadn’t come up, but we were almost certainly surrounded by a school of dolphins.

A new bird turned up yesterday, It had long tail feathers, sticking out behind the main tail feathers and flapped around us for five minutes or so. Looking it up it seems to be a Jaeger of some sort, a bird we have never heard of. It is part of the skua family, and indulges in the same disgusting habit of making other birds regurgitate what they have eaten in order to feed itself.

The weather has not dealt us the best hand. We have crept up to the North of the high pressure area, and although we have found a more favourable wind, not long after midnight it died away to almost nothing, and we had to turn the engine on. We have no other option now but to keep going Eastwards, with no real sign of better winds over the next few days. The high pressure is predicted to move Eastwards with us and settle over the Azores, which is where it should have been all the time, but this will keep is in an area of very little wind. We are assessing the situation, and may decide that we have to go into Flores, 150 miles nearer to us than Horta, in order to refuel.

We are still making progress however, and 10 minutes before midday, uk time,we crossed the 2000 mile mark. There will be celebrations this lunch time!