"17th April - North Atlantic Southern Part"

We had an uneventful night, we have not seen any shipping since we saw Black Watch.  It is lonely out here!  We are still racing along having broken Whisper's speed record over 24 hours!  It was 142 now it is 150 nautical miles.  We are on course and both of us are doing well.  We did 4 hourly watches last night and are just catching up on sleep when we feel like a snooze during the day.

Still no whales, but then we have several more days, with 665 miles to go according to the GPS.  We have seen a couple of Bluefaced Boobies, but otherwise no wildlife.. 

The waves have become much longer today, they have been quite short and the wind has been whipping off the tops, which after slapping Whisper broadside on have presented themselves in the cockpit, or Whisper has dug her nose in, creating an enormous sheet of water which whistles over the coach roof before creeping under the canopy and soaking us that way.  We should not complain as Windy Bill is earning his keep, otherwise we would be even wetter. Keeping watch is interesting as you have to look to the port horizon as Whisper rides along the top on one wave, then as that waves passes on she then runs along the trough, before she is picked up by the next wave and then you can then check the starboard horizon.  When I was on watch as dawn came up, I was reminded of the old black and white films produced in a studio instead of on location.  Any storm at sea was accompanied by the deluge of water, which was created by somebody chucking a bucket of water or two over the hero Captain and his crew.  It is apparent that this stage hand is still about and enjoying his work, just wait till I catch him!   

This afternoon our Sea-me alarm went off which means a ship is picking up our transmitted signal.  We put on the AIS to see where the ship might be as we could not see it anywhere. Even with a range set to 30nm it did not show up. After about an hour the Sea-Me alarm stopped.  Whatever it was it was more than 30nm away, or was it a submarine or worst still some mysterious Bermuda Triangle phenomena.