Arabian Sea - Day 7

Jackamy
Paul & Derry Harper
Wed 23 Feb 2011 11:27
 
18:02.75N 56:43.21E
 
Wednesday 23rd February
 
Would you believe it, we managed to turn the engine off for around an hour yesterday! Silence is golden! We needed to slow down so as not to approach a risk area around dusk, so we tootled along at 3 knots until we fell behind and since then we've been back on the runway with the Boeing 747. Oh no, I tell a lie, we did turn it off for 5 minutes in the night as we suddenly found ourselves running in between two floats, which means only one thing, a fishing net! Thankfully we made it to the other side without getting tangled up, but for a moment with 7 boats running straight over the net we were a bit worried that we'd have a repeat performance from the night before when we untangled Natibou. We are now a group of 7 boats because Jacabel has moved from the group that we rescued to get to Salalah quicker because Jacque needs to see a dentist pretty quickly and we travel faster than the others.
 
We had a pretty awful night, as around 20:30 we received the devastating news about the hostages aboard the yacht Quest that was hijacked last Friday. Quest joined the rally in Phuket so we were just getting to know Scott and Jean, but they also had two crew members aboard, Phyllis and Bob. Phyllis has been with the rally since Gibraltar, on a number of different yachts, and Bob joined in the Marquesas, so we knew them very well. They were both living the dream, having already circumnavigated once before with the previous Blue Water Rally. We are deeply saddened by the news and our thoughts are with their families.