25:56N 16:01W Fish wars begin!

Tranquilizer
Sail Ionian
Mon 22 Nov 2010 15:18
Dawn breaks to another clear,sunny day. We've had a pretty uneventful night witheveryone settling in really well. A lone dolphin was spotted by Neil and Scott on the 12.00 - 3.00 watch but nothing much else. Robin and Ninky ( previously known as Sam )had a little trouble getting into the new time zone on the boat but apologised for waking Neil and Scott an hour early by making tea! Rich and Lee make up the third watch and 3e hours on then 6 hours off alrady seems to be working really well for all of us. Last night's meal of chilli and rice ( made on Saturday ) went down well after the excitment of the start of the race and finally getting away from land. Today has seen the fishing gear brought into play, firstly by Neil with a brightly coloured lure attached with a spinner. After an hour this had become horribly tangled and had to be recovered and unravelled by ( patient ) Ninky . Attempt two saw the addition of another spinner and the whole thing then worked a treat - so well that Robin decided to have a go too. We look forward to the results at around dusk.Mother watch today is Ninky and Robin ham and cheese sandwiches with rice salad for lunch and surprise dinner at around 19.00.


Progress seems to be good so far. We've made roughly 150nm in the last 24 hours and are in about the middle of the fleet so very happy with that. We poled out the genoa this morning and turned to 240 degrees but don't want to be too far West as there's some South Westerly weather forecast in a couple of days which would mean wind on the nose for a while .
We've run the watermaker this morning and ,after an earlier mishap that filled the front heads with Very salty water because the sink sea cock was closed, filled the front tank again so hot baths all round tonight?

JPEG image