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Firefly - Getting hotter and a visit from a Minke



Our second day of 'typical' trade wind weather, (12 days into the voyage!)

It is now much hotter, so the butter has definitely melted, and we have switched to Flora! (Actually the butter ran out, and we keep the other spreads in the fridge, otherwise they'd melt too!)

The wind is a fairly gentle 10 to 15 knots, pretty much dead astern, so we are sailing goosewinged (that is one sail out each side of the mast for our non - sailing readers) at around 7 knots, rolling quite heavily in a northerly swell. Keeping lunch on the cockpit table is becoming quite a challenge!

The dolphins appear to have deserted us, but we have just had the delight of having a Minke Whale surface about 10ft off the starboard beam, much to the surprise of Paul who was polishing the stanchions at the time! Played in our bow wave for a few minutes before heading off in the distance. The Minke was about 12 feet long and recognizable due to the shape of its head, its fin being well back and it having a very bright white section on its upper flippers which is stunning to look at from the boat.

Its now 1200 nautical miles to Antigua and the limited amount of San Miguel we had on board will run out shortly. The unwritten rules that have developed regarding alcohol is that while one of us is cooking dinner, the skipper decides whether he needs a drink and if so the crew get one too.
Paul, Murray, Peter and Grateful (who is sliding from side to side on his perch - perhaps he needs some deck shoes)

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