Zaurak's Bimbling Blog
Friday 29th November 2019
Wildlife watch on Zaurak
This morning Claire and Adrian started off a day of wildlife in the dawn hours by attracting a pod of Atlantic Spotted Dolphins, a species that are known to chase fast boats and play around the bow. Their choice of vessel was somewhat questioned as we were still in our wind hiatus and Zaurak was slugging along at a measly four knots. That said, we'll take any encouragement we can get regarding our progress, even from marine wildlife. They turned out to be a good omen as by the afternoon we got fifteen knots of wind from the northeast and we have been averaging six knots ever since, with some highs of eight knots.
We continue to see birds flying low above the water and everyone is making intelligent sounding guesses as to what they may be, but without a bird book Caroline's experienced suggestions end up being as valid as Pete shouting 'Atlantic puffin' at every bird.
Before we left land there was much talk about the potential for cockroaches to sneak on board and multiply by the thousands, so on wildlife don't-want-to-watch we are doing well: no sightings yet.
On the less vegan end of the wildlife watch, Claire and Pete caught two dorado this morning. The timing of the catches could have been slightly better planned. They caught one, heroically went through the motions of banging it on the head, gutting it, scrubbing the deck and just finished the final drizzle of oil and stuffing of lemon when Claire realised they'd caught a second! This type of fish has a much better reputation than Wednesday's barracuda, being described in our fishing book as delicious. Speaking of, we've got 12 minutes until our fish and chips are ready for dinner. Zaurak out!
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