Sorry I didn’t blog yesterday.  I did try, but couldn’t get an internet connection to work - and too much computing made me feel ill, so I stopped.  But all is ok and I hope to get this post on-line shortly. 

I still haven’t managed to get a photo of a flying fish in mid-air, try as I might and despite seeing loads of them.. they are wily creatures and very fast.  You get less than a second before they’re too far away to see in a photo.

But while I was trying to get one on camera yesterday I noticed, for a fraction of a second, a grey mass beneath the waves.  Could it be…? It was!  Mr. Whale had come to play.  And quite a big fellow he was too.  He hung around for a good couple of hours, rarely very close, but definitely nearby, keeping an eye on us.  See seemed quite content to mooch about with us as we sailed along at around 7 kn. The sea was still quite rough and there were some big waves and Mr. Whale (no idea what type he was) seemed to enjoy surfing down the big ones, always keeping 1 to 2 meters below the surface.  It was a fantastic sight to see such a huge creature sliding so easily down the waves and easily keeping up with us.  Sometimes he’d glide ahead a few boat lengths and then I’d lose sight of him, only to spot him again in a few minutes merrily surfing a couple of waves behind us. One time, after he’d surfed down a wave alongside us, he turned and went underneath our bow and as he did so turned upside down, his white belly turning a great patch of water in front of us bright turquoise.  The last I saw of him, he shot ahead and then turned to face us and dived deep just as he was about to collide.  Perhaps he thought it time to get back onto his own routing.

I tried taking photos, but realise my camera is not up to pics below the waves.  I could see him fairly clearly with polaroid sunglasses on, but the camera couldn’t see through the surface reflection.  I’’ve posted below the only image I have that vaguely shows him.  

Yesterday and today the wind has held up well and we’ve been flying along with genoa and asymmetric flying from the forestay together (on opposite sides) with the main entered. The arrangement seems to work well.   The wind is dropping a little at the moment, but we’re still making good progress. We’ve had to head North of our track for a while to keep both sails filled and we’ve just jibed to come back on track in the last half hour.  Hopefully we can keep this arrangement for most of the remaining 600 miles. 

And just before I came in to try to send this, we had another visit from the dolphins.  This time they didn’t stay for long, but there must have been 15 or more very lively creatures.  Jumping, swerving and diving around us for a couple of minutes as their path crossed ours.  But they didn’t stay to play.  I’ve posted a couple of pics from a short video clip.  Sadly I don’t think I can post the video itself.  

We feel quite close to the end of the journey now.  We’re guessing we’ll arrive Rodney Bay, St. Lucia late Tuesday evening or sometime Wednesday if all goes well.  

Love to all.

Tom