Aditi - Day 5 at sea; Talking Filty

Motoring toward Mindelo during all of today's daylight hours but as soon as darkness fell we picked up a 7-10-12kn southeasterly so are doing over 6-7kn under full sail (unusual as we normally reef at night being a family crew). It's totally dark. Staring into the blue black of the radar at 1.30am and hallucinating over the pretty colours of orange and light blue which could be a boat, waves or rain!

Amongst flashbacks of a Pink Panther in 12 inch heels not counting sheep but counting filters...how many are there on this boat? 3 watermaker, 2 hydraulic, 2 eng oil, 3 fuel, 3 water pumps, 1 fresh water, 2 sea strainers, 1 bilge. 17 perhaps?

Talking of radar let's talk visibility. I was getting a large number of echoes last night at about 6am and I knew one was an ARC yacht due to the AIS display. But it looked like a possible 2nd echo about 2 miles to their starboard bow. I called up the ARC yacht and they confirmed no other traffic but I wasn't sure so went straight between the ARC yacht and the possible echo.

Dawn came quickly and looking back in the light there was the potentially unlit, barely radar visible yacht under their bow. I brought it to the attention of the ARC yacht.

Learning from Starblazer with their excellent virtual bar we ran a virtual Indian Takeaway on VHF with orders for Chicken Jalfrezy, Dhansak, Korma and Tandoori with Kingfisher. Tomorrow evening we will run a virtual DJ session.