Hoping to arrive Horta 27^th or 28^th June. Nice pod of dusky dolphins this evening. By 0800 next morning, the wind had crept up to 15 knots and by 1000 we were tramping al;ong under grey skies, on a beam reach, at 7 to 9 knots, occasionally breaking 10 knots in the gusts, the seas built a little but were only 3 to 5 feet and the arrival time on the GPS came beneath the 100 hour mark for the first time. I was chatting to Phil in the cockpit when, a mile or two off the port beam, I saw a whale, an enormous plume of spray and water was followed by the small but unmistakeable shape as he breached, clearing the surface of the water completely before an enormous splash as he rte entered the ocean, it must an enormous specimen, to have made such a splash from so far away. The salad and green veg are gone so I have started growing mung beans! A marvellous type of bean sprout that Carol showed me how to grow in a couple of days in water, can’t quite remember all her instructions but have just checked them( it is 0300 on the 22^nd) and they are looking good! Caught a nice mahi-mahi this pm, Joe reeled him in and I got him landed and in the fridge, ready for lunch tomorrow. For the first time we had our 1800 ‘beer’ and supper inside owing to light but persistent rain. It has cleared up now though and is quite a pleasant night with scattered cloud. The generator stopped generating this afternoon, still running fine, just not producing any electricity! Also,, I have a feeling the big fridge has conked out. Hope there isn’t a third breakdown around the corner. The generator and fridge are the first things to go wrong for ages, I guess we will get them fixed in Horta. Had our best 24 hour run today at 166 miles. As I write, less than 700 miles to go. Weather set fair for next few days although Herb is muttering about ‘heavier conditions’ from Wednesday. Hoping to arrive Horta Thursday evening or Friday morning. Phil awoke me at 2200 this evening as we were on collision course with another vessel! Strange, I took a look and sure enough, there were the lights, apparently of a vessel more than 50 metres long steaming off on our port bow from right to left. However, she remained on a constant bearing, on the radar, Phil had spotted her at 9 miles and called me when she was 4 miles off, we continued to monitor her until 2.5 miles when I changed course to starboard. I used my headtorch to see the autohelm controls and the other vessel called me on the vhf asking if I wanted anything as I was making a signal! He then left his transmit button down, jamming the channel so I could not respond, strange, I think it was in fact two vessels, probably fishing, but it was all a bit strange and made you feel a bit vulnerable.