A fish! Today Chris caught his first fish - a tuna (we think) that was THIS big, well, big enough to feed five for lunch along with Willow's falafel anyway. Thank you Chris! The fishing line is now retired for the afternoon as we have to finish the last of the fresh meat tonight.
Yesterdays wildlife seems to have had some effect on my subconscious as I awoke last night ready to dive on deck and shout 'a whale, there's a whale beside the boat' before thinking a while and realising that, given I wasn't actually on deck and could only see the side of the cabin, it might just have been a particularly vivid dream. This was followed later in the night by a very similar experience with a herd of cows. It took about the same amount of time for me to figure that one out too. Gillian thought she might have believed me for a while if I had actually made the announcement. Hmm.
Today is a day for topping up after the excesses of yesterday, both in fuel and in water. With the light winds and sunshine there were a number of 'can I wash my hair now' requests (not, of course, from Chris who just needs enough water for a head shave every few days. Very light on ships resources although rather heavy on suncream..) so the watermaker has been working overtime this morning. This afternoon we need to top up the diesel tanks from the emergency wind hole jerry cans and run a check on the engine which did, disappointingly, get a fair amount of use yesterday. We were considering whether this could be a new type of ocean racing, an event where you get a joker card to motor for a certain amount of time without penalty. Hopefully we can avoid having to play any more of those jokers from here on..
The good news, however, is we are now sailing again, the bad news is that it looks like we'll have to go nearly to Antarctica to find any decent easterlies. Currently the decision is which side we leave the Cape Verdes, what with a particularly large weather system looking like passing (hopefully..) just to our North. More on that in the next few days.
Gareth