Saturday 23rd June

At Sea

2 35.354 S
95 57.635 W (at Midnight)

What a nice day, the sun rose and made it warm for the first time since we left the Galapagos. Gerry kept the radio schedule at 07.00hrs, the other 2 boats had headed further south than us but they were now on the westward heading too. I threw out the last fishing lure in the hope that we would catch something; Gerry thinks I’m overly optimistic! Whilst Gerry was below deck on the radio I spotted a large pod of dolphins off of our port beam, it wasn’t as large as the one we saw yesterday but for those of you who are familiar with Douglas Adam’s Hitch hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy they brought to mind the scene where the dolphins leave the earth saying “so long and thanks for the fish”. They were leaping and somersaulting all over the place. As the morning wore on the wind picked up to 20knots apparent necessitating putting the second reef in the main sail and reefing in the jib; at the same time the gradient swell was 10 foot on the beam and with the wind driven swell hitting us off of the beam at shortening intervals on top of that we were bouncing around quite fiercely. Although the sun continued to shine, unless you were actually sitting directly in it the wind made it quite cold and we needed to wear fleecy jackets to keep warm. Gerry did the fish patrol around the deck and we netted 10 dead squid, not bad for one night! It’s a pity they weren’t edible. Just after we had had lunch Gerry spotted a large dolphin swimming along the port side of the boat, it was unusual in that it was alone and it was huge.
It played alongside us for a while, racing and leaping, it was then that we noticed it had a different shaped head to the dolphins we had been seeing up until now; this one had no “beak”, just a bulbous head. I took a few photos but never managed to get one with it’s head in the picture. It got bored with playing alongside us much quicker than we got bored watching it and headed off in a different direction. Our most exciting “spotting for the day was at 15.30hrs, a boat on the horizon off of our port side! Gerry went for his afternoon sleep whilst I watched this boat come closer and closer to us. It was a tuna fishing boat and it got to within 4 miles of us before it headed off in a different direction. I have to confess to being a little nervous about another boat coming towards us when there is nothing else around us for miles; guess I’ve listened too much to the piracy stories! For the rest of the day it was routine stuff though I did manage to cook some brownies late in the afternoon – just to prove I could cook standing at a 45 degree angle! We watched the sun set on the water,
with no clouds to obscure our view however just at the critical moment we went into the trough between the swells and didn’t get to see if there was a green flash or not – we are guessing there wasn’t! After dinner it was time to begin the night watches with Gerry taking first watch and me going to bed.