I am not good at being woken up at the best of times but when Mike wakes me up for my second watch at 4 am from a very deep sleep, I am particularly bad. Ah well, only another 12 days or so of this to go!
We have been forecast a cloudy day with squalls but in the event it turns out to be mainly sunny and although we see a couple of squalls on the horizon, none come near us.
I do the death patrol and chuck a few rather stiff flying fish over the side. I discover three squid which are now baked (so baked they have burned black) so solidly to the deck that it will probably take a hammer and chisel to remove them. I think I’ll leave that to Mike!
We still haven’t caught any fish. It’s a good job we weren’t relying on this otherwise we would have been getting pretty hungry by now. During the morning I talk to Joe from Brown Eyed Girl, fisherman extraordinaire, and he has only caught one fish since leaving the Galapagos. Apparently he lost two lines within ten minutes of each other and one of them had a breaking load of 350 lb. God knows what was one the end of that one, but I’m sure he wouldn’t have had enough room in his freezer for it.
To fit in with our watch pattern, I have a sleep in the morning and Mike has one in the afternoon. The only excitement we have all day is just after dark when suddenly a very large vessel comes towards our little group of boats. Charles from Dreamcatcher tries to raise them on the VHF as he is the closest to their apparent course, but they do not answer. As they get close, the vessel shines a huge spotlight on them but then continues past, leaving us to wonder whether it is indeed a fishing vessel or a naval one. The ship’s lights are so bright that it is impossible to see anything which would help to identify it.
Then we see another vessel coming over the horizon, exactly the same as the first but this one is heading straight for us. Just in case they are a fishing vessel that is trawling, Mike changes course quite dramatically, and we pass at a distance with no problem, still unable to identify their purpose.
Our position is: 05 deg 48 min S, 110 deg 51 min W
Distance so far: 3864 nautical miles
No comments:
Post a Comment