Good morning,
The sun rises on another beautiful day here in the South Atlantic. The large weather system that has been powering us along is starting to ease and I feel like today is going to be more relaxed.
The standout event from yesterday was nearly hitting a Great White shark. The shark was spotted at the last minute heading under our bow. I have seen many sharks before but nothing like this. The biggest sharks I had seen before were hammerheads and basking sharks. This monster dwarfed them all. At first, the thick muscular dorsal fin reminded me of an Orca (killer whale). The wheel was turned hard over to try and avoid hitting the shark. Luckily, it passed close down the port-side of Unicef, and, as with all good fishy tales, size estimates vary according to different eye witnesses. I would estimate that the dorsal fin was around 4ft and the shark to be around 20/25ft long. Put it this way, I feared we were about to lose a rudder. Perhaps I will give cage diving a miss in Cape Town.
Please forgive the typo in yesterday's blog. Greenwich is the reference point for longitude. From Greenwich you can go 180 degrees East or 180 degrees West. Seeing as we passed this reference point yesterday, we have many beautiful ocean miles of sailing before we return next year.
Here we go.
Ian and Mike