Commodore
April 4, 2023

Tuesday 4 April – at sea again

We have all slotted back into out shifts no problem, I was on at 6am and the sun was already up and hot! Ideal time to catch up on the blog. The winds are low teens and we are pootling along nicely with Sporty Spice up.

Around 9am I was downstairs getting dressed and the rest of the crew were in the middle of making breakfast when Rowan needed to make an adjustment to the sail, so he turned into the wind to slow down and there was a loud bang. They looked out and could see a very black whale or shark, much debate – big shark size but very black, Rowan even thought it might have been a manta ray. It appears it hit the port side dagger board and hull, but there was no blood and we were going very slowly. What a shock, considering the sunken boat in the Pacific that hit a whale. Rowan checked all the bilges and the rudder and they all appeared fine. Poor thing, we just hope that whatever it was had no damage.

Having checked the bilges Rowan had noticed yellow water and thought we may have an issue with a toilet, so after breakfast Rowan put some bilge cleaning chemicals down and the girls cleaned it out. They had to empty out our bags that are stored down there and we discovered to my horror that all my cans of tonic water and loads of ginger beer had all burst and leaked. What a mess and a disaster for my gin and tonics! Wine really doesn’t agree with me much these days and especially in this heat. This meant we had to have a major tidy up and reorganisation. Having lost loads of toilet rolls earlier in the year in wet bilges, and now this, I am rethinking our storage plan in the bilges! We happily also found the three cases of beer that we couldn’t find the other day. We winced paying nearly £5 a beer in the supermarket!

The weather and wind kept a consistent pattern all day and our average speed over ground for the day was 7.9 knots according to the instruments. Perfect comfy sailing.