Crew Blog

Hola helicopter!

01 May 2008

Well what can we say about day seven? We spice up our lunch time salad with the donated lemons from Santa Cruz which are still going strong. The crew have been very creative with them and we’re now hooked on Lemon Tea and Old Fashioned Lemonade (without the ice cubes). As a bonus we’ve been treated to a couple of dolphin visits, one of which seemed be a pod of 100 or so entertaining those on deck with some acrobatic activity.

It’s been a hazy day with light and fluky wind which has resulted in some demanding spinnaker helm and trim to squeeze 7-8 knots from the fickle wind to gain the best course. The bonus is that these conditions give the novice crew the opportunity to practice and perfect their helming which is coming on in leaps and bounds.

So far on this leg we have only encountered other Clipper yachts, which buzz us on one gybe or another under the cover of darkness, or some very distant freighters. So you can imagine our surprise today when we were approached by a curious fishing boat that came over for a closer look and played chicken with us until we bore away, followed by some encouraging Spanish hailing & waving from their crew as they passed safely by. We were even more surprised to see a helicopter flew over and waved then did some fancy landing on the tiny fishing vessel. We mothers had no idea that fishing was so sophisticated these days, the marketing on the tinned tuna in the day bags doesn’t mention helicopters at all. So we’re now on the lookout for fishing vessels and their nets which will make the night watch more demanding as we’re trying to determine if lights are simply freighters or fishing vessels dragging nets.

Sue & Maria