Hello World,
Since our last missive on Monday evening we have progressed largely in a Southerly direction, hugging the coast of Africa and passing into the Tropics at about 4am this morning. The wind has remained fairly light ranging from the lower end of force 5 Tuesday morning and progressively dropping to the zephyrs that have accompanied us for most of today. Last night we maintained a steady breeze from the NE and a beautiful starry night was enjoyed, witnessing more stars than I have ever seen before, even in New Zealand. Sorry Kiwi's, there is somewhere with less industry and therefore less polultion than you. Satelites and shooting stars were also a distraction as was the occaisional visit from a dolphin or two.
Today as the wind decreased and the temperature rose our skipper was true to his pre-race word and on came the donkey at about 7am and is still on now. We are out of fresh meat so the fishing lines are now hanging off the back, a bite on one line within a couple of hours showed there was some activity out there but the line came back empty and the lure missing. Nothing else so far. This afternoon we had a further visit from dolphins who came to play in the bow wave. It started with a couple with more joining from every direction until eventually they were about forty in number. They played for about half an hour before they left us to it.
As I write we have just had a good feed of veggie curry and we are motoring at 245 degrees into a force 2. Just as the sun was going down some pilot whates were spotted off the starboard bow and we changed course slightly to get a closer look. It was a large pod of maybe forty to fifty whales gently surfacing and dipping below the water and going nowhere fast. After five minutes of watching the whales and taking some pictures we continued on our way. Perfect post dinner entertainment.
Piccolo signing off.