Smelling Land
14 November 2014
We can either smell land or maybe it's just the effects of limited showers for a week. The water pump was sounding a bit wonky before the start and sure enough its now kaput. While we have a spare its burried and with just 114 miles to go as of 16:00 im leaving it until we're in. Hand pumping will need to do until then.
That's been our only malfunction, other than the carrots and sweet potatoes which all turned to mush.
The fleet is converging on Mindelo and we had one boat, a Lagoon 45 in sight this morning and there's an Amel and a Beneteau on the AIS just now. 15 knots from NNE is bowling us along under gennaker, poled out genny and full main. Half tempted to leave it all up tonight but having pushed our luck in the nfirst 24 hours I think we'll maybe a shade more conservative and put it away for the darkness.
Last night, pulling in our lure for the night as it was jumping in the water 20 feet from the transom a black finned, pointy nosed giant fish grabbed the lure and took off for 100 metres before it got off. And thats the story of our fishing success. Lots of bites but no landings.
By this time tomorrow we will be docked in Mindelo. A good passage and a good warm up for the rest of the trip. 2000 miles or something.