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Shelduck - Wed 27 Happy Birthday Bernadette, Water & Whale Shock



 
 
Wed 27 23:57.138N 18:24.522W Distance travelled 90 miles in 24h, 30 under power since 7am this morning.
 
We all wish Bernadette a very happy Birthday! (Bernadette is Gabby’s Mum and a good friend of Neil’s for almost 40 years.)
 
Slopping around, not much wind, Gabby hand steering much of the 00-04h watch. Cloudy, cold, dry night.  Brendan spotted a cloud that looked like Rua curled up but watching us. Glimpses of Venus, Jupiter and Saturn showing strongly through gaps in the clouds.
 
About 5am Anne heard a really loud splash and in the dark to starboard saw a large shape almost the length of the yacht rising up and splashing down, swiftly followed by a second one.  They were probably small whales travelling in the opposite direction but only 2m from the boat! Neil heard the loud snorting breathing sounds and the disturbed water.
 
We had had a 100 litre flexible tank installed at Doca Belem, Lisbon.  This has leaked significantly and is almost certainly the source of all the water we have seen under the boards.  We think the reason it tasted salty is because although Shelduck is usually a dry boat, over the years there will have been water ingress (like the big wave on the way down to Lanzarote a few weeks ago) which, as it evaporates, leaves its salt behind, so when fresh water from the new Doca Belem tank mixed with the bilge, it tasted salty to Anne and Gabby who were brave enough to taste it...
 
Almost no wind and what little there is is on the nose anyway, so Neil put on the engine at 7am, which if the wind picks up and moves round a bit means we can motorsail if we can as ideally we need to be making a minimum progress of 5knots per hour.
 
Anne spotted a large buoy to starboard with a transmitter attached to a string of buoys stretching into the distance. It turned out to be a 10mile long net with a small fishing boat patrolling up and down. Thankfully we had not run into it in the dark as we had to alter course by 10* to port in order to travel alongside rather than over it...
 
Sightings: 5 more short winged white rump birds, shoal of flying fish just tipping momentarily out of the water, large rusty floating gas cylinder, large slick of oily brown water (probably a large ship’s bilge cleaning activity).


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