With our minds no longer absorbed by the rat, all our mental focus has now returned to the routine business of upkeep, repairs and sailing west in good time. The latter has been made easier by strong winds coming directly from the east allowing us, on good days, to average over five knots!
Such strong winds can cause us problems. This morning, we had to bring down the yard and had all hands on deck to make a few repairs to the sail: two holes (about 1 foot and 2 foot respectively) in the sail were ripped during last night’s strong winds. We also took the opportunity to replace two brailing hoops that had been snapped off last week.
We thought that we would be safe in the middle of the Atlantic from any shootings or missiles, but that expectation was misled. On two occasions now an active sniper has clearly taken well-aimed shots at the crew. Both Steinar (of the A Team) and Remi (of the B Team) have been hit by flying fish whilst on the helm. Both men were unhurt but a little shaken up and managed to muster a laugh at jokes about the ‘scale’ of the problem. The Sea Team are now bracing themselves for an imminent flying-fish ambush. Every day we’ve had at least one flying fish launch itself on the deck!
Good to see you making such good progress, enjoy the flying fish and the Caribbean!