Author: john

Steve found loads of flying fish in the morning 20 of them.

We saw a big boat of some sort. After taking some pictures and zooming in on them it looks like a rusty fishing boat.

We have been going slightly off course to go with the wind. I would prefer it if th wind came around a little bit so we are on course.

When we bright in the lines we have lost another lure and on the other line the hook was missing. We are catching things, but we think that because we aren’t noticing in time, something bigger is taking our fish.

My early morning shift I had to get rid of some stowaways, two flying fish, 1 in the kitchen and 1 on the door step leading into the kitchen.

I must admit it was a good effort to get that far, not as far as the 1 that got on to the steps from the saloon areas to my hull, but still quite impressive. They must have bounced of something and during the day light I think I see the scales and a splat where 1 of them did.

Mum and Steve saw a big cargo ship this morning. I was asleep.

After the lost of 2 lures yesterday, Steve has only put out the remaining 2 lines, firstly because we haven’t fixed the other 2 lines and secondly 4 lines is a bit much in these big seas.

Forgot to mention yesterday, but Mum broke out the last of the chocolate that Ella brought over, mum stashed it away from us, it has been shared out and we are again very thankful to Ella for bringing it over. Thank you Darling.

As we progress my early morning shift 2-5am is slowly turning into a 11pm-2am shift. We are having lunch and dinner later and later and I’m finding it very hard to sleep before this shift. Just as I do fall asleep, Mum wakes me for the shift change over.

Not much to report apart from that we’re half way there….. depending on how you look at it.

We are half way from the distance we have traveled to the distance we foresee to travel.

We broke out the fizzy wine at about 22:30 had a glass and a bit then back to the usual routines of shifts, sleeping and eating.

Earlier two of the lines got tangled, Steve and I spent a while untangling them, we lost a lure due to that. In the evening while bring in the remaining lines another lure was missing. Something big maybe?

On the ride front, it’s been a low to medium setting on the mechanical bull scale.

Feeling much better, but the symptoms of the cold still remain.

Didn’t have the best rest, but was woken up by the boat moving around a lot.

Mum handed over the shift and disappeared. We were being pushed by the wind and quite hard 22-25 knots. Regen was on, which normally slows us down by at least a knot, but we we still being pushed at 9.5+ knots, with slightly touching 14.5 on the down hill bit of the waves.

I sat there in the dark for the first hour watching and taking in the numbers. Wind angle, wind speed, gps speed, speed through water, where we’re heading, where we’re meant to be heading and where we’re pointing. After an hour I calmed down, by that time I was used to what the boat was doing and generally how it felt in those conditions.

I keep on forgetting to say that the media player is hooked up to the chart plotter and has been for a number of days since our last turn for 2400 miles. Feeling better about the boat I settled down to watch a few South Parks and then listened to some music.

Towards the end of my shift the winds started picking up again to 23-25 knots, I shut everything down and then was looking at the numbers again and what the boat was doing. It was Steve’s shift and I woke him up promptly so he could deal with the rising winds. I debriefed him on what had been happening and asked if he need me to help him deal with the worsening conditions, he said that he was alright and I went to bed.

5-10 mins later he came down and asked if I could help as the Out-Haul-Rigger-Thingy had broken and our main was flapping around in the wind. We both donned our safety harnesses and buckled ourselves to the boat.

I’m sure Steve will go into much more detail about how we sorted it out. Steve did the main dangerous part of running around the boat while I manned the winches and brought in the lines so we could reef the main sail. It took us 30 mins of moving the boat in and out of the wind to put in the reef and haul the excess sail in to the cradle, but by the end of it we and the boat were safe. The main sail had been reefed and everything was back under control. I went straight to bed after that bit of excitement.

By the time I had woken up from my morning nap, Steve had tidied up the main once it got light, but the winds were still too strong to do anything else to it. We’ll just have to wait until the winds die down to fix it properly.

The afternoon was pleasant the winds quite high still, we were on a good angle to the swell and did a bit of swell surfing. This is when you make the boat go down the swell to pick up speed and then catch the next swell, surf down that and so on. If it goes right you can have a very smooth and fast ride, but sometimes you get out of sync and start crashing and slamming into the waves until you get enough speed back to catch the right timing again. We got it right for ages and were averaging 8-9 knots.

It’s like riding a mechanical bull, when you get it right it is like the slowest speed, gentle up and downs, some side to side movement, but very gentle. In general what it’s been like for the last few days is like a medium setting, still gentle ups and downs, but with the odd jerk to the side or a direction you weren’t expecting. Sometimes its been getting up to a medium/high setting of being flopped around in random directions with force, but not that violently. I hope that we will never see anything more than that.

No fish today either, we might have to rethink what lures we are using.

Still not feeling great, but the ibuprofen, fistful of multi-vitamins and a broken nights sleep, has made me feel a little better. My throat is red-raw though.

Steve did something to the main sail today, outrigger or something…. this allows us to change the shape of the bottom of the sail. Instead of it being fixed in one place we can let it out or bring it in.

We are still in between being pulled and being pushed by the wind. Not too sure if the outrigger added to our performance, it felt like we had a slowish day, but looking at the stats we did ok.

We saw some dolphins in the afternoon and a big fish jumping out of the water.

No fish on our lines today.