Monday 29th November - "one, two, miss a few."
We have been at sea for over a week now and it would probably be correct to say that we haven’t made as much headway as we would have expected. Time continues to be tight though, as we cram in tanning, tea towel washing, the continuation of Come Dine With Me (today saw a sandwich deli open in the galley) and of course sailing.
On the fishing front, we have had success and failure. Our first catch of the day was a baracuda - viscous looking *uck*r who unfortunately met with a sorry end when we neglected to take the line in. However, our longed toothed friend went on to help us catch our first Dorado! The next two, much bigger Dorado, didn't make it back into the boat - Hugo, the sensitive soul he is, is still mourning for the fishes that got away.
We have had extremes of weather. It has gone from flat calm (ideal bikini weather) to 20 knots on the nose. We are currently trying to sail around a headland of one of the Cape Verde islands - extraordinary that we manage to find a headland to beat around in the wide open expanse of the Altantic Ocean. What is it they say.you can take the crew out of the north sea but you cant take the north sea out of the crew? After continued engine troubles, our approach to cruising has gone extreme and we have decided to race the British Army boat to St Lucia - Watch out British Soldier we are on your tail. We are putting in a south east flyer. Decision to head south was made after a boat Glass Slipper put out a mayday call - we hope they are alright and managed to get to safety. In all seriousness, some boats and really struggling in the winds.
We may be at sea, we may be racing, but that doesn't mean we are any less civilised than before. Cocktail hour continues to be a morale booster and yesterday, as scheduled, we had High Tea Sunday! If you ever wanted to know what it is like sailing into 20 knots of wind whilst baking brownies in the lunge position, then ask our on board pastry chef Kim. Unfortunately due to the adverse weather conditions we were not able to make use of Hugo’s home made three tiered cake stand. Shame. We are hoping that we pick the trade winds up on Wednesday and then we are go for cake stand next Sunday.
On our nature watch we have seen whales, more flying fish (one even committed suicide on the deck this morning - perfect Dorado bait), and there was a sighting of a shark at 7am this morning. David Attenborough would be proud.
To finish, I will leave you with Jess's quote of the 'Gosh, there is a lot of water around'. Conversation is running dry and we have at least another two weeks at sea - oh dear