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!