18th May Day 8 Bermuda - Azores 37:12.267N 044:50.836W
Whisper
Noel Dilly
Sat 18 May 2013 19:11
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"Atlantic Gofers"
A beautiful day and grand sail, calm blue sea,
speeding along at 6-7kts with 15kts of wind - just perfect!
So why is it, that this morning I went up into
a dry cockpit, settled myself cross legged on the lee side facing the sea to do
a little whale watching and within 10 minutes was soaked through by an enormous
gofer which cascaded over the windward rail and there has not been another
one since! It is a real mystery.
It seems that we are totally alone on this ocean as
we have not had a sighting of another ship for at least 48 hours. We have
seen several Shearwaters and yesterday I had a glimpse of what I thought were
dolphins, but it was only a glimpse from some distance and they didn't come to
play. Sandro had a sighting to, but again only the creatures back but he
said it was about half Whisper's length. Hopefully, we will see
more.
To-day it was calm enough to safely take the
stove off the gimbals and find the source of the gas leak. The hose had split
where it joins the gas fitting on the stove, the aftermath of a gale and a
victim of spending so long on starboard! Noel was able to cut off the
damaged inch and refit it, so that we safe once again. Hopefully we
will be able to get a replacement in Horta.
All is well and we are all happy to be passed the
halfway mark. It will be great if we can keep up this rate of
progress, we covered another 151 miles yesterday.
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