Return Crew Day 15 – 22 February 2020

Robyn Wolstenholme

The art of bread making is improving. I made regular yeast bread yesterday which came out really good. It left me with dough all over my hands leaving me no choice but to add peanut butter to it and clean my hands with my mouth. For dinner we had a pumpkin, baked bean and meatball stew which was made by Ollie and Tony and was really tasty. Having been at sea for over 2 weeks has some of us going crazy. We have some crew members (Ollie and Francois) sounding like mad men when they see seabirds trying to imitate or call them. This morning we even had Kristy that volunteered to clean the floor of the cockpit. We are almost at the point of starting to do push ups thinking that today would be the day but it has not happened yet. The change in time zones has left us all drained and having afternoon naps. We are definitely feeling the temperature drop as we head further south. I currently hold the record for the highest speed reached which is 10.5 knots achieved in the first week. Around l unch time the wind picked up to 20kts and we were averaging between 7-9kts. Francois hit a high of 10kts today. After lunch the wind speed picked up and so did the swell. We had forgotten to close one of the hatches in the saloon and we were reminded about it being open when a splash from a wave came over and in through the hatch leaving Clare drenched as she read her book.

You may notice on the tracker that there is a loop we had to turn all the way round to reel in fish. While I was busy with the blog we heard both the reels running. Francois jumped out his bed so quick, Ollie was off his post at the helm (Tony took over) and I was up from writing the blog to get to the rods. Both the lures had something on them. We hove to and in the process the line I grabbed wrapped around the rudder and we were unable to reel it in so we Ollie hand reeled the line in so we could cut it to get the lure back. Francois grabbed the other rod and fought the fish for an hour before bringing the fish closer to the boat. We saw a bright turquoise colour us the fish surfaced from the sun rays through the water. Cam had quietly mentioned giving Francois a snickers bar if he caught the fish. I heard him say this so he had to stick to his word. We struggled to bring the fish aboard. It was a long fin tuna over 20kg and over 1m long. He marinated and braaied it till it tasted like chicken. It was delicious.