Day 11 : 17.26N 42.12W
Elixir - Ovni
Richard Merrick
Thu 3 Dec 2009 10:21
Several of our British blog followers had noticed
and complained that the blog was late yesterday, my apologies as we got caught
up in the moment somewhat and blogging got waylayed and as our clock is winding
back more and more each day the time difference between us and the UK is
growing.
Last night as we were preparing Elixir for the
night watch by taking the spinaker down, assessing the winds to make sure the
sail settings will get us through a relatively trouble free evening and having
our crew cup of tea, we got caught up in the magnificence of the full moon
as it rose over the horizon. It was so bright that we could see beams of light
stretch accross the ocean when it went behind clouds and it was quite possible
to read a book in the cockpit under moonlight.
As we scrambled to take photos we noticed a great
breathing noise that you would expect from a whale and started looking around to
what we could see. Eventually we started to notice that there were two beautiful
and huge whales swimming with us. It was really great, they seemed curious and
were happy to spend a good couple of hours happily swimming around Elixir and
investigating. At one stage as a huge wave built up behind the boat and was well
over our head, one of the whales surfaced within it and we could almost reach
out and touch it, although we clearly value our arms too much to do that. There
is some debate onboard as to what type of whales they were, our skipper suggests
that they were Pilot Whales while the rest of us are settling for big ones as we
don't know any better.
Brilliant.
Elixir continues to look after us
well.
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