A Little Bit of This & That
01 December 2007
John
At the moment we are sailing under spinnaker with the jury rigged halyard and there appears to be no chare - we will check the halyard in an hour or so when we drop the spinnaker for the night. For safety we are motor-sailing thru the night as the sky is overcast with squalls and, as there is no moon visible, it is a bit too dangerous to sail at night with the spinnaker.
As mentioned above, it is overcast and has been since leaving St Helena. We have yet to experience a really spectacular sunset on this trip due to the heave cloud cover. Shaun and were discussing the days of the old square riggers and came to the conclusion that the navigators were brilliant in their work. How they used to find the little lump of rock (St Helena) with weeks of cloud cover preventing star or sun sights, is really brilliant navigation and record keeping to be able to get their ships there safely.
Since leaving the island we have done no fishing - the freezer still has an oversupply of tuna. However, we need variety in our fish diet and tomorrow morning we are going to put out our lines again and see if we can hook a nice Dorado, as we are now in Dorado and Wahoo waters. Tonight it is beef sausages with mash and sauce and sweet corn - Shaheda and Shaun doing the cooking.
This morning I baked two loves of bread, one of which "evaporated" within an hour of coming out of the oven. The second loaf has been put aside for Sunday brunch - fried eggs and bacon on toast.
Thanks to the folks who have posted comments to the blog. Thanks also to Deon (ZS1ZL) back in Cape Town who copies them to me every once in a while. I have replied to a few of them and will continue to do so over the next few days.
On the amateur radio front we have not been too active. I managed to chat to Des (ZS1ZY) and Dennis (ZS1AU) earlier today and received a bit of news from the home front. We will be up on 14237.5 KHz tomorrow (Sunday) at 16:00 Zulu and listen out for any calls. I gave my last report through to Alistair (ZS5MU) on the SA Maritime Mobile Net the morning we reached St Helena and subsequently am reporting our daily position to Jack (AA3GZ) in Pennsylvania in the US.
And back to the sailing and the environment around us. We are in flying fish territory now and have them fleeing from the approaching boat on a continuing basis. These wonderful fish come in sizes from a few centimetres to about a foot in length. Terry, with his size 11 shoe, has managed to pulverize a few small ones that have landed on deck overnight. I must admit that they do smell very fishy at best but when flattened by Terry's shoe, smell worse than a can of anchovies left in the sun.
Well, on that smelly note, regards from Terry the "Flying Fish Pulverizer", Shaun, Shaheda and myself, John