Day two aboard Jua Kali started slow, painfully slow in fact as we found ourselves stuck in a wind hole seeing boats catching up and sailing around us!
With a lot of concentration and effort from the helms and trimmers we managed to edge our way S/SE back into some decent pressure, although not so much as we had the night before.
From there the game plan was to work further south into the promise of more breeze before attempting to put any west into our course again. It proved hard to keep faith with that plan when every other boat we encountered seemed to be headed due west though! We persevered however and did find some decent wind come evening.
For the first night tonight we held a spinnaker all night which gave everyone some valuable experience and helped us catch up with and overtake some of the fleet that had sailed past us earlier in the day. None of these were other racing boats however so our current position is unclear,
it is still very early days though and we are hoping to enter into the trade winds proper as a well oiled machine.
The night began cloudy and dark but later cleared up into an incredible starry sky with no moon to obscure the dimmer stars with its own brilliance. This clearing of the clouds also brought a more consistent and increased wind which made for an absolutely amazing night of sailing.
In fishing news, the controversial decision was made to pull in the lines to reduce drag until we found more wind which unfortunately limited fishing time to the evening of Monday before it got dark (unsuccessful). Tuesday morning brought hope when a small squid was found on deck, this unfortunately did not count towards the fishing competition we have going on and was also not enough to make calamari for 9. It did encourage keen fisherman/French person Baptiste though who put out 3 separate lines in the hopes of landing something a bit more edible. Though he d
id
almost eat the little squid.
Around 10:30 we caught our first fish of the trip, a decent sized Mahi Mahi which we promptly ate as sashimi.
The past 24 hours also brought the first dolphins of the trip with a huge pod following us at different points throughout the day including at night where they could be seen due to the bioluminecense in their wake which was truly beautiful to watch (but did distract from the driving somewhat).
Quote from the crew: "The dolphins have their babies and an underwater kindergarten!"
Until tomorrow, this has been Alex Fisher with The (very long) Jua Kali Report.
d0404fe5-3344-4cf5-826d-e26640c7c7af4517595456584386559