We motored through the night, 'Waylander' was as it appeared 40 miles in front of us. We continued motoring till about 1100hrs, we found a little wind, not much about 8kts. We put up our Twizzle rig and in calm seas we sailed along at 3-4kts. We repaired a loose batten in the main, luckily Yvonne spotted the missing piece had dropped out had fallen in the sail bag.. It was sunny and hot, gradually we peel off the layers of clothes worn for the night sail. Its over 80deg in the shade of the cockpit so its just shorts for me and nail varnish for Non.

 

We decided to put the rod out and troll for a while. After about an hour the reel screamed off. Quickly tightening the drag, I struck home Yvonne strapped on  the rodholder belt and I passed her the rod to fight this one. Half an hour later she got it alongside, the biggest  brightest blue and gold Dorado we have seen, really beautiful, it seemed a shame to stick a knife through its head and eat it all up! Nevertheless I gaffed it and managed to get it over the guard rails into the cockpit.It weighed 20lbs and was a metre long, I'll update photos when we have  an internet connexion.

 

It was then that we received a vhf call from a Tomahawk, a beautiful 48ft classic racing yacht:they were closing in on us albeit slowly and came alongside, a very well spoken man shouted across 'Hello old chap, we were just passing, thought we'd drop in for a chat'  Can you believe that, in the middle of the Atlantic, another boat comes over for a chat, it was so funny. We swapped a few weather forecasts and fish stories and showed them our freshly caught addition to the freezer. They sailed away 50% faster than us we were doing 3kts they 4.5!

 

We then continued to clean the fish, the boat and ourselves, its not the fish you can clean in the kitchen sink. By this time it was gone 1300hrs, time to send our posn. and receive a weather forecast. I attended to that while Non made lunch from the remains of yesterdays catch. Later that afternoon, sailing slowly we received a call from 'Waylander' we were quite surprised they were still in range they were heading more south. However during the night they got bored with the slapping of sails and started the motor and are now 15 miles east of us.

 

They were taking part in a pub quiz that night over the shortwave with other ARC boats (each boat named themselves with a pub name) Anchor in hope etc. They invited us to join their team because we don't have a transmitter only receiver. There were 10 questions plus a bonus question put out by one of the other boats. Us 'Chaser' got 33% percent of Waylanders correct answers, sounds good hey, actually they got three correct and us one. Our combined effort gained us second place, from the bottom.

 

We said goodnight over the VHF and cooked dinner, you guessed it. Then Non turned in and left me on watch till midnight  Wind is picking up a little doing 5kts now. Until tomorrow.