23:23.55S 28:51.12W

ratCATcher
Andre and Alison Stroebel
Wed 2 Feb 2011 10:57
All together now....................BLOWWWWWWWWWWW!

Having been stuck in the middle of the high in the doldrums the last 3 days
or so; is wonderful for cruising. We have been swimming and relaxing.

Well of a sort; for racing this is bad bad bad! The Captain (Andre) and our
navigator (Kevin) have been tearing their hair out. The other catamaran that
has been behind us most of the way has now overtaken us. We have to assume
they have used up all the miles they were allowed to use their engines for.
Well we are hoping they have. We have used some of our hours when the wind
speed stayed at 0 for hours. This morning the wind is up slightly and we are
now making about 3 - 4 knots per our. The last two days our average over 3
hours has been less than 1 knot. Ouch!!

So as I said guys all together now: BLOW! Please :)

The sea is just awesome, the colors are indescribable. One can say blue but
until you have seen it "blue" does it no justice. When we swim and dive down
as far as you can go its an amazing sensation, you have nothing to judge
your depth by just surrounded by the most amazing color with rays of
sunshine going down forever.

What has amazed me is the lack of sealife. Other than flying fish we have
seen nothing. Kevin said one night he saw a couple of dolphin swimming with
us for a short while but otherwise nothing. Twice we have found the hook on
our lure has been pulled straight! So we didn't see anything on it but it
must have been big to pull the curve out of the hook.

This morning Kevin and I saw a fish about 1 meter long jump out of the water
twice just near our lure but we didn't catch him. We all keen for some nice
fresh sashimi!

Our bird escort, we think is a tern (he is chocolate brown with a white mark
on head / beak) that seems to have been with us for the whole trip took a
break last night and spent the night as a stowaway sleeping on our wind
generator. Quite amazing I put on a red torch and went within a meter of him
and he just looked at the light in disgust as if to say "How rude, you woke
me". The pile of bird turd on the solar panel was his revenge for his interrupted sleep we think!

So we have 789 nm to go to the finish which is about 10 days sailing at this
speed, so we desperately need more wind to get there sooner and before our
competition and before the cutoff on the 12th.

So all the "rat catchers" ask for prayers for wind and good following seas.

Love to all from "there where there be dragons!"