Light wind sailing, lots of sun and first fish in the freezer

The last few days sailing have been a lot of work, sails up, sails down, sails up, topsails up, topsails down  and now topsails up again, doing 4 knots close hauled. The wind has been so light, that we have to start the engine every now and then to keep moving and not drift back to the south. On the 7th we had a totally becalmed 24 hours. The sea was flat and oily and reflected clouds, stars, moon and most of all… the sun! HOT! We had a short swim stop to cool down a little and found the water to be less than refreshing! The first meter of blue ocean water was hot! We did not measure it, but suspect it to have been around 30 or 32 degrees! But underneath that was nice cool and refreshing ocean water, nothing that a good jib boom dive could not solve!

During the night we sailed for a few hours, then started drifting to the West and started the engine. In the morning Tony and Gijs set the topsails again but in the afternoon we had to start the engine to be able to steer.. and so on. But since last night we have been sailing with a nice breeze and even touched Light wind sailing, lots of sun and first fish in the freezer the 5,5 knots!!

AND we caught some fish! We are not sure what it was yet, but it looked tasty! We were motoring along just before dinner, when Sam came to get me and said I had to come take a look at something. Here I was thinking a nice sunset or weird bird or something (these are the most exciting things one sees out on the deep deep blue ocean), but no, it was something that looked a bit like a wreck piece drifting on our starboard side… we turned off the engine, took another look and got Gijs and Tony up. As we got closer we said that there must be fish around something floating in the water, and as two hooks went over the side, we saw big schools of fish just jumping for it! Tony pulled one out within a minute and could have filled our freezers up.. but we decided to stick with just one fish. Then our attention went back to the floating thing.. it seemed to be part of an old lobster pod, 2 or 3 meters in diameter, all grown over with pock’s and weeds, with two shearwater just sitting on it. It looked very ominous.. And then we saw a big shadow glide through the water, just behind the school of fish. A shadow the 1,5 to 2 meters long.. or maybe that was just our shark imagination setting off…