Following Tuesday’s success in re establishing the spinacre halyard Wednesday saw us back to average 9>10kts and just under half wind speed, we have peaked at 15kts surfing down 3m waves. On the fishing front we happily repatriated a 4cm flying fish - goodness knows how it got on board must have been a maiden flight!!! perhaps then only to be consumed by the "monster" that attached its self to our "pink Octopus" fishing lure . Got away after 10 minutes fighting!
We are now settled into some routine, we are almost a quarter of the way across, and in trade winds and bobbing 4000m above the Cape Verde Abyssal Plain below. The Ocean is 24 degrees and the air temp is in the 30ies during the day and not much cooler at night.
On the food front things proceeding well - Pork Chops in Cider with mash last night. Mrs Taylor's beef bourgignon for mains with fresh mango for pud is tonight menu - (it was excellent thanks Mrd T).
Sad news is that the white wine boxes we bought in Las Palmas turn out in fact to be white Sherry!!!! yuck and 6 of our lemon stock have been lost to mold but the rest of our provisions appear fine and dandy.
Thursday (day 4) was a mixed one to say the least! Made 204 miles against the odds; best run of our division (Cruising B) with lots of excitement - actually make that too much! At about 0800 (during the shift change) the cruising chute parted from the snuffing bag at the mast head, and was under the boat and shredded in about 6 seconds - not enough time to release the sheet unfortunately. Had been flying it for 24 hours and it was giving us an edge (at least for 20 of the 24 hours). We were averaging 10 knots for most of the daylight hours. We then trashed 2 hours sorting ourselves out (including going up wind for about half an hour trying to get the chute (spinnaker) out from under the keel.
Wind now dropped to about 14 knots from behind, classic downwind trades giving us about 6 to 7 knolts currently. Over 2 days since we saw another boat and no chit-chat on the VHF - but the Atlantic is still in its beautiful mood – 2.5m rollers from the stern and the sea and sky a deep blue. One more fish hooked today but got away as we got it near the boat (again). Sighted many flying fish, a tern (Arctic, but a long way South?) and some sort of petrel.
Friday (day 5) saw our first fish landed after hooking and losing 5. This time we dropped the spinnaker specially to slow the boat down which enabled Phil (Sac fishing) to land it - a small dolphin fish. Filleted and cooked to perfection by Martin for our evening meal - a special moment.
As expected our conservative approach Thursday night meant we lost out a little to Luna, the class leader, but held out against most of the rest and Jasmine well back now. I wonder if they might have problems. Need to watch Baghira, another Beneteau 57 who are only 50 miles behind us and South of us. Almost all others (including Luna) are North of us - Back in business now though and cruising at 9 knots into the moonlit night.
Weekend tomorrow so boys wanting to watch sport on telly.
This entry by Robert/Martin
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