Theodora - 5/12

Yesterday saw a few important moments. Firstly, very early in the morning we passed by a fishing vessel of some kind 1,400 nautical miles from the nearest land. It came into view with dozens of lights blazing punching and rolling through a three meter swell. It was not a big vessel and seemed to take no notice of us as it passed less than a mile away. We had seen it on AIS, which was reassuring, but this did prove the value of keeping watch, This was the first sign of other human life we had seen for six days.

Later in the morning it became clear that the easterly winds we’d hoped for were not gong to appear so we put the Twizzle rig away, hoisted the main and set off on a broad reach. At first this seemed to be a welcome change. Proper sailing demands you have your main up. Well, whilst we bashed along the swell at between seven to eight knots in bright sunlight with twenty knots of breeze, two reefs in the main, it became apparent very quickly that whilst this felt like proper sailing it was slower and much more uncomfortable than Twizzling. However it was good fun helping in such conditions. Towards the end of the day the breeze shifted and up went the Twizzle rig, up went our speed and up went our levels of comfort. Later on in the afternoon we saw another sailing vessel albeit briefly, this was a very welcome sight. We tried them on the VHF, both channels 16 and 72 but could not get a response, sadly.

Since we are now unequivocally over half way we opened the cake and present Yeats Philip Giles had given us for this particular occasion. The cake was a lovely little fruit cake decorated with a whale. This was washed down with some of Edward Hine’s award winning Damzon Gin. Thank you to both Philip and Edward for these gifts. And particularly big thank you to Philip for introducing us to the Twizzel rig.

When we started this journey the moon would rise early in the night sky flooding us with a silvery version of daylight. Last night will be this moons last as it now looks like a small cut in the night sky. The downside of loosing the moon is that our horizons shrink at night making our world feel more lonely, the upside is we get fabulous night skies and many shooting stars. Not a bad alternative.

1176 nautical miles to go.