The psychological trauma of yesterday's fishing foray resulted in a decision to take a break from fishing for today. Jooj had achieved his goal and we were content that one fish's sacrifice for a tasty appetiser was enough at least for a day, maybe two.

 

Whilst that decision meant we didn't have to wipe blood off the cockpit furniture today, we have been plagued with another faulty loo. Yesterday's fix-it was successful, but unfortunately today's has not been. This means we are down to one for two's but still two for one's; not the end of the world. 90% of the two hours spent crouched around the toilet today were spent unscrewing and re-screwing one extremely disagreeable and, I would argue, petulant screw.

 

Enough of the trauma and onto some of the more surprising and beautiful aspects of being a few hundred miles in the ocean. Yesterday we found a locust hitch hiking on one of our lines. Having never had the misfortune of seeing one before I did find it quite fascinating. I wish I could post pictures to these blog posts but that would cost about $100 in data so you'll just have to google it for now. It was sandy coloured with very weird striped eyes. It hung around for a while but then flew off - Sam encouraged it off. Likewise we were surprised to find a tiny white moth on the bimini at the same time. I don't really know whether these two events were linked - were they travel companions or was this just a coincidence? The bigger question though is how does a tiny insect that presumably is mostly land based end up 150 miles off the coast of the Western Sahara?

 

If you read the blog for our journey down to the Canaries from the UK you will know how excited we were by both the dolphin escorts that we had, but also the night time bioluminescent water we trailed behind the boat. We have only seen dolphins once or twice since leaving Gran Canaria but the bioluminescence has really rampmed up. The last few nights instead of a few twinkly particles in our wake we have been treated to explosions of light. It's hard to describe but it kind of looks like a lightning storm seem from above as the light from each cluster was dispersed in the foam created by the boat's wake.

 

Combine that with dolphins and you know what you get? Sparkly dolphins! As they swim through the water towards the boat you can see what looks like a glow in the dark torpedo weaving through the waves - and then it's there right off the back of the boat leaping out the water creating a burst of light as it re-enters creating a trail as it dives back down and under the boat. Being out on the ocean never stops delighting us!

 

On this trip Tin Man has also become a bonafide science vessel. Our resident honorary scientist, Will, signed us up on the pontoon in Las Palmas to an initiative run by SeaLabs and has been diligently taking water samples morning and night as we make our way to the Caribbean. Each day he takes a sample and tests for salinity, pH levels, electrical conductivity, temperature, redox potential, specific gravity, total dissolved solids, and possibly other things which I've never heard of. We believe this officially upgrades the classification of our journey to an "expedition."

 

The no wind promised yesterday was delivered today. We have however managed a very gentle sail today with the bright pink spinnaker out. It was officially designated a "pootle" but it was also such a beautiful day. The sun, having been behind the clouds for about 36 hours, finally made a reappearance. Unlike the ripeness on the bananas that we purchased in Las Palmas which are about as green as anything has ever been and remain stubbornly so. We have had two sweepstakes in the last 24 hours - when will the bananas be ripe with most anwers solidly into December at this point, and what was our event position (defined as proximity to Saint Lucia in a straight line) in our boat category. I think I've mentioned this before but it isn't a race - at least until it is. As our southern strategy has meant our westerly progress has been slower than most of the rest of the fleet leaving us the furthest away from St Lucia in our class. We are confident our strategy will pay off in the end though as we grab tomorrow's forecast wind first. Heading south has meant we are now officially in the Tropics having crossed below 23 degrees north.

 

We have around 120 miles left before we make our 'big turn' to start heading more west. It'll be pretty much the only time we have to turn for nearly 2500 miles so we are going to mark it with an official ceremony dressed in our Tin Man crew polos! When you're at sea for this long you have to keep yourself entertained and, in the words of Mama Cass, make your own kind of music!