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Thula - day 12



The day yesterday, the 11 day of our journey, was really one of the first days that reminded us of where we are heading: the Caribbean. From the early morning to the late evening the sky was almost entirely cloudless giving us a full 10 hours of glaring hot sunlight (and, luckily, even some pretty good wind).  After the cloudy day before, this weather was highly welcome. We used to it wash and dry some of our salty clothes (after all, we were all really expecting to spend some days less at sea), get some practice with the sextant (one of Dieter’s newly discovered passions as it appears), work on our tan (after the experiences from the day before everyone put on at least 6 layers of sunscreen – every half hour!), take the Atlantic Ocean Ice Bucket Challenge and… do some more fishing. After the sailfish we had lost in the morning I had to say goodbye to another HUGE mahi-mahi in the afternoon. It goes without saying that my frustration is growing by the minute (it has even come to the point where I started to sharpen and point all the hooks with a knife sharpener). I just keep telling myself that I keep on loosing the fish since we are mostly sailing with our Genacker up and therefore cannot really slow down when pulling in the line… but surely it’s gotta work at some point!!!


If everything goes according to plan (which it rarely does as we found out), we should be passing the 1,000 miles post this afternoon. The theme for our little celebration has now been announced by Dieter and the required items have been handed out accordingly. I don’t want to spoil the surprise – you will hopefully be able to see the pictures tomorrow! As we are getting closer to our destination more and more time and effort is spent on speculating on and calculating our possible arrival time in St Lucia. This is particularly true for Jimmy who has a flight booked already for next Friday. In fact, he has proven to be quite a talented mathematician precisely calculating our ETA with every single change in speed on the screen. On our first day, we all had to take a secret guess as to when we will finally set foot on land again. I am pretty sure that most of our guesses have proven way too optimistic. Whoever guessed the most conservatively (probably Dieter as I know him) will most likely take home the prize (whatever that may be).


Liesel’s warnings about the increasingly meagre stock of fresh food products are getting louder every day. Nonetheless, mysteriously, she is still coming up with the most superb multi-course meals every day (Entrecote steak with roasted potatoes, “Babuti”, Waldorf Salad with Roast beef etc.). I wouldn’t really be too surprised to be served a perfect Caesar Salad with fresh tomatoes and Chicken breast on day 20 of our trip. Fortunately, this continued provision with great food eases my pressure to finally land another fish a tiny little bit. Still, I really wouldn’t object to finally being able to contribute with a little tuna sashimi or a some sailfish steaks. I sincerely hope that the fishing stories in the other ARC blogs read kind of similar to mine and we are not the only boat on the race whining about the difficulties of landing fish while under sail. If you see other boats with bigger fish (or any fish at all, for that matter) please don’t believe them as I am telling you it is quite impossible. The pictures have to be photo shopped!



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