Zaurak - Zaurak's bimbling blog

Zaurak's bimbling blog
Thursday 28th November 2019

WE WENT SWIMMING!

There is good news and bad news. The good news is that we went swimming in the Atlantic: 26 degrees and glorious. The bad news is that the reason we were able to go swimming is because we have a flat calm: 3 knots of wind and less than 1 knot of boat speed. The calculations of one mile an hour, with 2300 miles to cover... let's not do the calculations and hope for wind in the coming days and weeks.

-Today's activities-

Claire and Adrian came off watch at 6am. Still very dark. Claire thought she had sensed a whale close by.

Richard and I were on watch from 6am until 9am. At around 7am, I heard someone huff out of their nose on the port side of the boat. I checked and Richard was still where I saw him last, at the chart table. I waited. Then, again, a distinctive huff. Pete must not be able to sleep. Then a huff followed by the sound of water breaking. I squinted into the pitch dark and saw a trail of phosphorescence. Richard came upstairs and we spotted the backs of dolphins breaking the water and leaving trails of phosphorescence in their path. Claire's sense was justified, but slightly smaller than a whale.

9.30am. Everyone awake. Breakfast of muesli, coffee, tea and toast.

11.30am. With no wind, skipper Richard announced "time to swim!". Pete and Adrian lay out a rope with a couple of floats for grabbing to get back into the boat. Richard was in before anyone had a chance to worry about what kind of animals were lurking in the kilometres of water that fell below. Everyone went in at some point. Pete enjoyed some circuits of the boat. Some came out with jelly fish stings which we later realised were floating past the boat in large quantities.

1.30pm. Ate lunch of wraps, leftover bolognaise from last night's supper, cheese, ham and salad. We emptied the small rubbish bin for the first time today, which is a credit to Claire's provisioning organisation ensuring we are carrying limited packaging on board.

2.00pm. Richard listened out for the other boats in our group on the SSB radio. The last couple of days the boats have shared their location, weather and speed as well as an interesting question. The first question was 'what is your favourite 80s record?'. When Richard was radio net controller he asked everyone's best meal on board so far. Today, two of the boats with Americans on board were celebrating thanksgiving tonight with turkeys in the oven.

2.30pm. Pete made tea and everyone settled into afternoon activities: Richard reading Bernard Cornwell's Sword of Kings, Pete watching his daily allowance of The Crown, Adrian working on his sextant calculations, Caroline writing her diary, Alice listening to an Adam Buxton podcast and Claire taking a post-watch nap.

3.00pm Whilst I was whiling away time looking out over the mirror-like sea my eye caught dark shapes in the water. A huge pod of dolphins in the distance. Everyone came up on deck and we admired what must have been 20 dolphins making their passage in the distance.

2.00pm Adrian realised that our boat clock was set two hours ahead. Instead of 4pm he realised at our longitude we are at 2pm. This meant, without consultation, Richard volunteered for our watch to continue an extra two hours to match up with our watch schedule. Not too arduous, he pointed out, reading his book in the sunshine. I filled the extra two hours complaining about being on watch for an extra two hours, which I enjoyed immensely.

It's now 6.30pm in our new found time zone, the wind has just filled in and we're pleased to be moving again, albeit at four knots.

Fish caught: zero
Atlantic puffins spotted: zero
Miscellaneous birds seen: many
Number of bird books on the boat: zero.