Paula Rosa - Monday 3rd December – Paula Rosa

Monday 3rd December – Paula Rosa

Last night, a couple of hours sleep after a delicious glass of cold white wine and supper. Up for the 1am watch fumbling around for the first 5 or so minutes whilst our eyes adjust to the blackness despite millions of stars surrounding us. There are so many shooting stars although David reminds me they are not stars but all the meteorites burning up through the atmosphere, I’ll just keep gong with.. ‘catch a falling star and put it in your pocket, save it for a rainy day’….. !!

We continue to roll, crash, speed through the ocean and only at 3.30 as our watch comes to an end does a sliver of silver appear on the horizon, it looks like a smiling mouth, very soon now it will only be getting up as the sun rises and it will be so so dark.

Averaging 10.8 knots overnight with the wind between 17 – 20 knots the wind picks up further under the clouds and Nick and Chris have a blowy early morning watch, down below in the cabin it is boisterous to say the least!

The highlight of the week….. We are mostly all gathering in the cockpit in various stages of breakfast when David shouts ‘whale’ port side. There is a mad scramble and all eyes are glued to the sea, it is so easy to see a multitude of creatures in breaking waves but a couple of minutes later the real thing gracefully glides through the water approx. 300 metres from Paula Rosa’s side. For at least the next hour we scan the waves and are rewarded by the whale breaching twice and frequent siting’s of not one but two whales, maybe a mother and calf? We are not sure what they are but approx. 25 feet in length with pointed heads and white patches on their sides and underneath with a small curved fin, possibly pilot whales?? It is amazing how close to the surface they stay, surfing the waves and coming along our port and starboard sides, at the closest they are probably 30 feet away. They are truly inspiring creatures and everyone is overwhelmed by their proximity to us if not just a tiny bit nervous too! How lucky are we to see that, unfortunately despite our best efforts there are no pictures of any merit but the sight will be captured in our minds for a very long time.

As the day progresses the sky clouds over and gets quite grey for the remainder of the morning, the wind is picking up and David and I average 11 knots on our lunchtime watch. Sitting on the stern I watch as Paula Rosas bows lift up and up then down we come hooshing along the front of a humongous wave with a phenomenal 20.3 knots, catching you up Wills and Sergio!

Just in case any of you are wondering how the 80 ft Swan, Umiko which is currently 1st in our division are doing so well, they were until the last moment in the racing division with a professional race crew on board, for whatever reason they dropped out and are now in our division! The boat looked pretty racy in Las Palmas marina with coffee grinders in the cockpit and a massive sail wardrobe including a spinnaker twice the size of ours – good luck handling that beasty, ours is quite enough!

Well the sun is getting low in the sky and the plan is to take down the asymmetric and sail overnight with the main, which has just had a reef put in and the jib – a more sedate night maybe, looking forward to it…

With love and keep on tracking

A slightly more salty Dee x