Bamarandi - Monday 23rd November - Whales or Dolphins?

The sheer volume of flying fish all around us continues to amaze us. How many millions must there be in the Atlantic! We have returned 9 to the sea so far from the boat, some in a better state than others dependent on how long they have hitched a ride with us for. Large numbers of them fly around the boat every few minutes and skim off across the water.

We saw Haumana - a Lagoon 52 catamaran - late yesterday afternoon flying the Canadian flag with Frank Artis the owner / skipper. We had seen them in Cape Verde and chatted to them. What are the chances of hooking up onto a large piece of stray fishing net out here mid-Atlantic? Unfortunately they had managed to as we discovered when we hailed them on the radio to talk. They were about to get in the water and cut the netting off (the only option) as it was caught around their rudder.  They were going to turn into the wind to stop the boat to do it.  We got very close and took some great pictures for them for their Atlantic Crossing photo album. They are now sailing about 10nm off our starboard side doing 9.7kts so they accomplished their mission and are going well. We wonder if their turn into the wind dislodged the net for them as they have made up ground very quickly.

We have continued our tactics of following the straight bearing to St Lucia with no mainsail up and our genoa out wide rather than going faster but having to tac back and forth. At the moment we are in huge swells with some very choppy waves thrown in for good measure - so turning into the wind to raise our mainsail again would be extremely battering for the boat and for us. This swell is forecast to continue for some while yet. It is the biggest swell we have encountered so far on this passage and you can really feel and see the huge power of the sea.

At about mid-dasy today we saw a pod of 3 large dolphins - or were they 3 small whales?  They were black and their dorsal fin was very big and rounded not like the thinner more pointed fins of dolphins we have seen to date. They gave us fleeting glimpses of their faces which were rounded and also not pointed like dolphins. They stayed with us alongside but a way off and then behind us for about 20 minutes and we got one or two photos - Caitlin got the best shot on her iPhone.

Lamb and Pea soup for lunch today with bread rolls, very good. Pringle and sweets supply is holding up admirably.

The weather forecast is OK - but with this swell continuing for some while yet. Bamarandi has held up quite well apart from our gennaker line breaking on the last leg and an intermittent engine problem (we thought we had already had every problem possible on our Volvo D3’s) but we have 2 engines and by turning one off and leaving it for some while then re-starting it we seem to be OK for the moment. Volvo Antigua will have to work on it (again) when we get there. We use the engines to charge our battery bank and we have a back-up generator as well so we are in a good place.