|
What a difference a day makes - and a few degrees of Longitude...
Wind had dropped to 10 to 12 knots from just West of South. We've spent the early hours of the morning in a glorious broad reach getting up to 8 knots as we played through the dying winds of yesterday. Earlier we tried the 1.5oz kite, but the sea swells knocked the air out of it so we've resorted to putting up the oldest, largest headsail on Eclipse - a 152%, it's debut for the crossing! Something for the apus foredekus lot to do.
Last nights dinner was indescribable....accept to say that what the Azoreans deem as a "frozen pizza" we could simply not identify. We should have know from the distinctive lack of Pizza joints in the Azores that they hadn't quiet got the concept right....
Fishing remains the key daily activity. Penolium reported catching a 5 kilo Tuna last night while sailing at 8 knots boat speed in 30knot winds and Barkas had an even more favourable report on today's SSB call. Ugh! Barkas is over 300 miles to the East of us and being pounded by 30 to 36 knots of wind and following seas - maybe Eclipse being a bit slow isn't a bad thing for now... Last night Liam resorted to putting a glow stick on the line in front of the squid lure. Our first attempt at night fishing. Unfortunately, the only fish we've seen so far is the rusty cans of salmon in the bilge and the tins of tuna we got at Punta Delgado.
The good news is that we are basically on the rum line now for Falmouth - about 820 miles or so to go. We'll be looking at the Grib files shortly to decide which side of a confused high pressure area to go around. Word for the day is just to try to keep the boat moving and concentrate on the fishing....We're near the Antialtair Seamount and are hopeful that it will have some sealife around it. The depth in this area is 4,000 meters and the seamount is only 213 meters. It would have been a good place to be near in last night's rough seas but today it's calmer.
All for now,
- Greg
|
