moon was about quarter way up the sky, smiling at the blue planet below.
The wind is a fresh 15/16 knots, I let some more headsail out, tied a
sling around the clew and shaped her to perfection. Once again we are
flying, maintaining a constant 8 knots. While I was turning the
chartplotter on bright to see how we are doing a flying fish came flying
pass me missing me by the narrowest of margins. Exciting times. He or
she suffered a bit of a nose bleed as it wacked into the cockpit. I
quickly went back into the galley to get a sheet of papertowel, picked
the wrigling body up and threw it back into the ocean. Steven just
popped up and I showed him where the poor creature smacked into the
boat. It was nearly impossible that the flying fish missed me, it looks
like he went straight through me if you saw where he smacked into the
boat. I have had a few crewmembers before that were struck by a flying
fish and a nice big blue bruise is normally the result. I will also turn
our clock another hour back today which will place us UTC - 4 or 6 hours
behind SA. We are about 230nm from St.Lucia and if the wind stays with
us we could arrive there before noon tomorrow. As stated before we
prefer the sun to rise at 6am and set at 6pm, more or less.
Nick and Eduan are also learning more and more about the finer art of
setting sails to maximise whatever wind we get. More sail does not mean
more speed and I think Nick was fairly surprised when I demonstrated
this to him yesterday. Too much headsail pushes the bow down a bit and
you are plowing through the water. Furl it in a bit and you easily gain
an extra knot. Eduan is also paying attention to our sail settings. When
I took watch over from him I saw that he had pulled the headsail in
quite tight and we are on a beam reach. I showed him what happens if you
let the sail out a bit till she starts luffing and just tighten it a
little till she stops luffing, or flapping on the edge. I have to
constantly remind myself that these guys haven't sailed a lot before and
I have to teach them as much as possible. But I only ever do that if the
crew shows an interest and glad to say both Nick and Eduan is keen to
learn. Nick always asking a lot of questions and Eduan always willing
to learn from his mistakes. I encourage them to experiment and find the
sweet spot on the sails themselves, not to just follow my advise
blindly. I prefer they understand what they are doing and the dynamics
involved.
Once again we have a lure out and once again the conditions are looking
really good. We can only try our best and hope for the best. I have had
a lot of success fishing over the years and know what colour lures work
the best. But somehow we are just not getting fish. I don't know if they
are getting scarcer which I am sure they are or whether they are getting
wiser. My daughter always tells me fish are so clever because they swim
in schools. At eight years old she should know and I have to up my game,
try a few different colours, perhaps keep the lure out at night. Just
decided to drop a pink lure in, lets see what gives.
'Shooting a Line' is the nautical term today. A fishing boat 'shoots'
its nets and lines. There is a probable link with the fact that
longlines, used for catching cod, were several miles long and it took
hours to bait the many hundreds of hooks. Quiet, undemanding work would
be conducive to story telling.
Our position at 7:30 our time,UTC - 4 , or SA time 13h30 is
11*11'N/058*04'N.
And hey hey, it's FRIDAY !!!
Have a seriously good weekend. We will be spending most of our at
St.Lucia.
Captain Paul
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