SailBlog - Flying Fish landed

Graham

30/11/2008, North Atlantic Ocean, off Cape Verdes

Over the past few days, the wind has picked up and so has our speed. We are averaging now a good 5.5 knots and are approaching our turning point north of the Cape Verde Islands. Once here in a couple of hours, we will be turning due west and our course will be set for Saint Lucia. Why have we come so far south you may ask? At the moment, the trade winds cannot be found above 20 Deg North and there are large areas of no wind, and areas of up to 40 knots of squalls to the north west. Our strategy is to get to the more stable trade winds as quickly as possible, then coast along at a steady speed, gaining an advantage over those who stayed further north. This is really important, or rather would be that is, if we were racing....! Last night I headed out onto the deck to move our gybe preventer rope (this stops the boom swinging dangerously across the boat in the event of a sudden wind gust) to allow us to move the boom to the starboard side of the boat, and lo and behold discovered a flying fish on deck suffering from the early stages of rigour mortis (or else it had arrived on deck pre-frozen!). This made up for the 0.5 metre long blue backed tuna which I caught yesterday morning and lost off the line less than a metre from deck. This was the biggest fish I have ever caught in my life, so it was disappointing seeing it escape, residing myself to another canned dinner again tonight! What the heck, there's always tomorrow, and tonight's meal is chicken with sweet corn and rice, one of my all time favourites. And so, we continue heading south west....