And then we were left with just the waves.. it is quite exhausting to be on a constant moving side ways ship. But the sunset we have just enjoyed and the sunshine we enjoyed during the day, made up for a lot of the shaking!
The sunset took forever and had the brightest colors, orange, red and pinkish. It set about 1 hour ago and still the sky is light and where the sun disappeared the orange reddish glow is still visible.
This reminds me a lot of all the sunsets we had during our North West Passage last year. The hours of setting sun and the watch handovers always filled with “we watched the sunset for hours and still it is not gone”. The amazing pictures we took from it did not do it justice, but gave a good idea of the colors that we were seeing.
The youngsters we have on board are used to the Caribbean sun setting in just minutes, going from light to dark in less then 30 minutes. They remember climbing up in the rigging to see the sunset and enjoy it from aloft, but getting there too late because it set so quickly and putting on the harness took so long! So now they can sort of make up for that, just not in shorts, but in longjohns.
The wild life we have seen so far has been pretty cool. We are constantly surrounded by Fulmars, Kittiwake and Razorbills. Close to the Faroe islands we saw puffins dive for fish and we saw adult Gannets hunt together with yearling Gannets, still in their grey coat. Gannets in their juvenile feather pack remind me a lot of the Boobies Gijs has seen along the way last autumn/winter, the brown Boobies and certainly also the Blue foot Boobies. During the windy and rainy patch we were joined by the Skua, which seems to like foul weather and never shows up when the sun is shining. We have seen several pods of Minke Whale (or what we think were Minke Whales) and two sorts of Dolphins, most likely the Common Dolphin and the Bottlenose Dolphin. (this is a sumup so far, not just in one day)
Especially the Kittiwake and the Razorbills make me feel we are closing in on Iceland. I am looking forward to the climb up the horn to be greeted by their calls. I tried to imitate the Kittiwake call to my watch, but they looked at me like I was something special.. wait until they see the sight of the Horn and hear the call of the Kittiwake!
