My night watch is from 5 to 7 am so I am the only one around to witness the beautiful sunrise in the middle.
Photos: Another chilly but beautiful sunrise
As usual, with the clear sky overnight, it’s cold in the morning but starts to warm up immediately the sun rises over the horizon. Mike gets up followed by Heidi and I wait for a cup of tea before heading back to bed for a couple of hours sleep.
When I get up I see that the strange red algae is back, more of it even than before, running in great streams all around the boat. The smell is back with it too, although it is not particularly strong. If I didn’t know better I would think that the mother of all ships had just emptied its holding tanks!
Photo: Red algae,
During the morning we see a large whale in the distance, leaping out of the water and fluking, but it is too far away to photograph. The suddenly a pod of dolphins arrive. These are much larger than any we have seen before and it’s wonderful to watch them as it has been such a long time since we have seen any. We are only going slowly and they stay with us for about ten minutes, amazing really as we have very little wake for them to play in.
Photos: Dolphins playing off the bows
These dolphins (no more than 8 or 10 of them) act differently to the smaller ones we have seen so far. They roll in the water, sometimes swimming belly up watching us and the boat. And they swim so effortlessly, matching our speed and rubbing against the hulls of the boat, something I’ve not seen them do before. I wouldn’t be surprised if a couple of them have blue anti fouling on them when they leave us. In the distance some of them leap high out of the water, not spinning but just getting really high and then they dive deep. It’s so strange that their behaviour is so different to what I have seen before. Eventually though, they leave us, although they (or another pod) join us another three times during the day.
Late in the afternoon (after yet another sleep) the algae has completely disappeared again and the wind takes us off course forcing us to motor in order to get back on track. Then the wind dies away altogether and we put the genoa away. Casey keeps saying how comfortable it is on Jeannius, no rocking, rolling or things moving about. I assure him that it’s not always this comfortable, and I am sure that if Johanne were here, she would totally agree after her experience last week here!!
There is another whale sighting in the distance as the sun starts to set but again it is too far away to capture. We can just see the huge splashes in the water as he whacks his tail down. I manage to get the sunset though.
Photo: Approaching Townsville, another sunset
During the early evening, Casey keeps looking with a certain level of alarm at the depth indicator and the charts. If he was in his own boat, he would be much further out than we are going and he appears just a little nervous. His monohull is a lot deeper than us and although Mike assures him that all is OK, he doesn’t quite look as though he believes him but I know Mike knows what he is doing!
Heidi and I cook dinner as a joint effort. I do the sauté potatoes and she cooks the garlic lamb cutlets. Yum.
Our position is: 19 deg 07 min S, 147 deg 14 min E
Distance so far: 10781 nautical miles
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