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Sweet Dream - Day 194 July 28, 2019



Morning radio net brought sobering news that Danica1 was having some medical issues. The bright side is that in true excellent seamanship and kindness, Alora was shadowing them and standing by to put one of their crew onboard if necessary. All day we galloped along. Captain did research about our engine, ssb radio, and Mackay. I grimly hung on and cleaned up the salon. Each day of this whirlwind journey has found me battling grime in out of the way places like bilge access covers, cubbyholes, and hard to reach corners, as well as scrubbing floors, ceilings and walls. The goal was to do one room a day. I’m almost on track; having completed three and a half rooms in four days. All this toil is because rumour has it The Australia border patrol is quite picky, and a clean boat should help smooth the inspection process. The four meter waves banging into the beam every five or six seconds making us tilt 35 degrees make nitty gritty cleaning feel like a circus act! It is lovely though to enjoy the sparkling shine that elbow grease produces. Instead of our daily 17:00 squall, today our excitement was sailing into a big pod of small pilot whale-like critters. They don’t run the bow wake as dolphins do, but instead, just swim in circles all around the boat in groups of three or four. They don’t leap and cavort either, just plow their very blunt faces just above the surface with a deep whooshing sound as they take a breath, then tuck back in and speed around like torpedos. We were delighted by their presence for about 15 minutes . Then the radio cackled to life and a helicopter icon appeared on the AIS. Turns out Danica 1 was having some medication and SAT phones dropped onto their boat. We could hear the helicopter side of the conversation asking Danica 1 if they wanted to retrieve the two drops with 400 meters of line in it while underway or would they like to stop and have the packages and line dropped directly into the boat. Wowza! What a crazy operation! In 20 knots of wind at sundown no less! It sounded like they chose option two, we heard the helicopter say they were a few minutes away and would stay on channel 16. When the chopper went lower we could no longer hear them on the radio or see the AIS icon, but oh my! What a bit of drama! At 50 miles behind, we are not of much use, but our thoughts are with Glen and Mary on Danica 1, and Steve, Linda and Ian on Alora, as they shadow them.


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