Trifon - Trifon

26th November
Finally some decent wind from the north has pushed us close to the eastern
end of the Cap Verde islands and we will cross them tonight. The wind has
been gusting up to 25 knots and the boat has been fast over the past 24
hours. On Saturday Robert and I caught two large mahi-mahi 6-7 kgs each
and on Friday Michael landed an 18kgs tuna. With so much fish on-board and
no freezer we have stopped fishing we have eaten our catch.We have been
sailing through a zone of flying fish where hundreds of these small fish
take flight as Trifon's hull disturbs them. We have also been followed by
several large schools of dolphins swimming slowly with the boat. I think
the dolphins are using the boat as a large weapon to frighten the small
fish and they then can eat their scattered prey. We saw a small pod of
large whales two days ago but they took no interest in Trifon and I did
not try to intercept them. Robert is progressing with the continuing saga
of how to start our main engine which was diagnosed as a weak battery in
Las Palmas and then a faulty relay both of which were replaced.Now he has
dismounted the electro magnetic switch on the main motor and bypassed the
circuit. Jon has now properly recovered from his bad cold and we have run
out of tissues a while ago.We have also had some issues with SSB radio
reception and this maybe due to the position well to the east of most of
the ARC fleet.
All is well on Trifon