Commodore
January 13, 2022

13th January – A whale sighting!

A screenshot from the Race – PolePole is the furthest south grey catamaran! The bright light green catamaran is our neighbour who had to turn around.

I woke up to the hum of the engines still going after my restful night of no shifts, such a treat. All 5 of us are on 3 hour watches throughout the 24 hours. This means that every 5 days you get a night without a watch. It seems to be working really well and everyone is in good spirits.

Now that we are leaving the African coast we are getting out of the shipping lanes and it is getting easier. We were warned about migrant boats and given a drill to follow, so we feel relieved to have left the area and not seen any. The papers don’t seem to report the huge increase of migrant boats to the Canaries. The most dangerous of all migrant crossings with well over 4 thousand lives lost last year that they know of.

Drone shot of the big Asymmetric sail up and the flat seas

Flat calm Atlantic

Han in charge!

Han’s work out

With our horde of avocados ripening thick and fast, Rowan cooked up delicious eggs on smashed avo with tomatoes and my home made bread with pecan nuts in it from Muden (the farm I grew up on in SAfrica). A healthy way to start the day. We are slowly getting more and more fresh produce into our fridges as it’s getting warmer, things are turning quicker.

By midday the wind started eking over 6 knots so the boys got the Asymmetric sail up, lovely to have a break from the engines. We were doing over 5 knots of boat speed which wasn’t bad at all.

Luke was doing his shift at the helm seat and suddenly spotted a water spout. We all saw that it was a whale, too far to identify, but we saw its huge body and then its tail diving down. We think it may have been an adult and youngster. They just remained a fair distance away, but we could follow their water spouts for quite a while.

Late afternoon we got the Asymmetric sail down and put the Code sail up, with the wind increasing slightly we were doing a nice comfy speed. A game of Farkle (excellent dice game) with non alcoholic guava juice cocktails started a very good evening. We gave up playing after Tom managed 3 hot dice in a row including a full house. Suddenly the sea around us was alive with dolphins and they came in their hordes to ride our bow wave. We’ve never seen so many so close to the boat, it seems as if they are having the time of their lives! They stayed with us for well over an hour and all through the setting sun which was spectacular. We have wonderful videos and photos but sadly I can’t send them via the satellite, I will upload them when we finally arrive in St Lucia. It really was a magical experience that kept us all out on the trampoline for ages.