After the excitement of clocking our highest distance covered in a 24hr hour period yesterday, today's figure of 171 nm was rather disappointingly received by the crew. As such our skipper has recalibrated our arrival time to 12 days from today (down from 12 days from yesterday). The wind, whilst remaining relatively good has died slightly, although not enough to put up our rather fragile spinnaker which we are saving lest the wind dies further. Spinnaker aside, the crew are all working hard to grind every ounce of speed out of the boat - perhaps driven by some rather optimistically booked flights that are starting to appear a little tight.
On top of this the debate continues to rage over whether a fish on the line merits slowing the boat. The skipper, 1st mate, and Julien (who incidentantly has the earliest flight to catch) insist that we are in a race and can't possible stop to increase our chances of landing; Yacine and Carlo are the most vocal leaders of the opposite camp - perhaps driven by their appetites for something other than vegetables (and Carlo by his large investment in fishing tackle which is currently yielding less than a British Bank)
Anecdotes
We landed our first fish last night around 9pm. This was an especially surprising event given that the skipper insists on the lines being hauled in at sundown. It was in fact a flying fish, and as it landed on the starboard deck, a number of the crew were so taken with fright that they nearly dived over the port side. Panic over, and Yacine set about retrieving our first catch - however in the excitement, the fish (which even the most optimistic fisherman couldn't describe as "not that small") managed to escape overboard.
To compound this disappointment the rod suddenly started dispensing line early this morning; all the crew emerged from their slumber to man their stations (most of which are valuable advisory roles), however on retrieval it was discovered that we had landed some seaweed!
Epilogue
Sorry we did not have enough understanding of each other to do it first. Anyway I am convinced that most writers do it after the book is finished. So here is a better description of the people we have onboard. We have Captain Ken (so Brit), his long term sailing friend Bob (an English Robert actually), Jaime (not a Spanish man no, he might be a double agent), Carlo (an Italian citizen lost in translation with London residents), Yacine ( French citizen, Algero-Tunisian Blood, living in London... a quadruple agent potentially), Julien (alias saucisse) and Francis (Young talented English, not for cooking though)
So this is it, we all met in the port in Gran Canary Island, and were trying to understand who we were going to spend our 3 weeks trip with... it came clear very fast that we were in very good hands on the security side. Point ticked, it is an important one... Some people on the boat thought Yacine was a girls name (some Italians lack foreign names exposure: travel more please). Anyway sorry to disappoint. So only guys here. The ocean not being a real challenge so far, we have loads of time to read (statistics: probably more than we normally do over a few months on land) and we discuss personal things... For instance, this morning we did a group therapy for our friend Carlo who seems to be hooked in his cultural net (the conclusion cant be disclosed here but please consult www.CarlosInTranslation.com for more information)
Profiles:
Ken: As Brit as any French would expect a Brit to be
Bob: Mister No, i will explain in our next edition
Julien: Iceman
Carlo: Voluble, loads to say... we will explain
Jaime: The good Man
Francis: Talentissimo
Yacine: Mr MissFish (as he calls himself), for us it's chef yacine
More to follow...
Personal messages
From Julien, first sea shower at the back of the boat this morning. The water is very warm and so is the weather. We only wear shorts and t shirt to protect us from the sun during the day and a light jacket at night. We are now on the highway to St. Lucia, on a straight line heading 270 with good 20 knots wind pushing us at 8 knots as I speak. Anyway, see you soon, love you all, Julien