luminous whales

Latitude 29d 28.77m S Longitude 003d 55.55m W

Tuesday 11th September 2012

We are now motoring in a westerly direction more or less along the line of latitude 30 degrees South. We had one good day of fast sailing but have mostly been motoring or motor-sailing; which is normal on this route where we are trying to avoid the strong westerlies to the south but not make too much northing which increases the distance we have to travel.

We hooked a nice little tuna the other day which made us two very nice main meals. We tend to cook one main meal a day with everybody helping themselves to snacks and left-overs in between. I’m cooking today – ostrich sausages and pork spare ribs with whatever vegetables look like the need to be used first when I go to forepeak to make my selection. Ed cooked a couple of different vegetable curries last night, I cooked a morrocan vegetable stew one evening and we had a couple of variations of tuna roasts by Kali so we are doing well on the food front.

The moon has been rising later and later and is well into the last quarter so the nights have been very dark. Dark nights are good for watching all the photo luminescent creatures in the sea objecting to the boat’s passage by flashing their warning lights at us. Ed was treated to a spectacular last night when he was outside watching the light show and noticed a large patch of light starting to appear about 50m off the beam. He was just starting to wonder what it was when it shot skywards giving him quite a surprise. It seemed that a fin whale had surfaced and blew just alongside the boat. Since then we have all been hoping for glimpse of a similar luminous whale blow!