Greetings from yacht Ensemble.
Another lazy day of sailing. Winds were fairly constant - but slight - often dropping below 10 knots. Seas slight - and no rain. We now have just over 300nm to go - so should be there in two days.
We have taken a bit of a crooked path to get here - having already travelled 2700 nm on this leg. We mistakenly thought the winds and the currents would be more developed further south. With the benefit of hindsight - both the wind strength and direction would have been more favourable if we'd stayed more north. Oh well - next time! ;-)
We had a bit of a scare with the generator yesterday - where it was only delivering a small charge to the batteries. It turned out to be a problem with the remote unit - and went away with a simple reset - but not before we'd run the generator for 5 hours! Fuel is tight - but we should still have enough (over 200 litres).
Fishing wise it's been an interesting day - having hooked not one but two Marlin. Both snapped the line (again - operator error?) - but not before putting on a dazzling display of aerobatics - I'm sure just to convince us we really did not want 200kg of angry sea flesh with a 1m sword on its' nose thrashing about the deck. Still ... maybe next time.
The other fishing adventure was a flying fish that went in through the bathroom hatch overnight. This I considerately left for Magali when she wakes up - partly to remind her that the fly screen hatches are not just for insects but all flying pests...and also to help her wake up. ;-)
On the more pleasant side of things we had a large school of dolphins ride with us for half an hour. The first dolphins we've seen for ages - and Joel and Magali had a good time watching them from up on the nets. (No more fish bites for the rest of the day though...)
We rounded off the day with sunset drinks and a BBQ.
Two more days to go!
Cheers
Dave & Magali
20March2012 020