Adele 1 - Adele 1 log - Day 21 - Bit of a blow and a fish.

Evening all,Its the end of our 10th day at sea since leaving Cape Verde. A few dramas yesterday left the atmosphere on the boat less than jovial. Firstly as is the way with our luck if something is going to go wrong it will happen in the pitch black middle of the night. Yesterday morning saw the autopilot rod fail at about 3 in the morning. Drew set about fixing this and then had to recalibrate the entire system once it was reset, not what you want to be doing at 3am!The second noticeable event of yesterday was myself hooking into and bringing onto the boat one of the most remarkable fish I have ever caught in my life. The size of this Mahi Mahi, the colour of it and the fight it put up on the way in (including jumping out of the water and tail walking for several meters) was just. read more...

Adele 1 - Adele 1 log - Day 18 - Unpredictable winds and Wahoo

Evening all,At the end of our seventh day at sea and we have spent the last two days cursing the unpredictable winds. This morning the wind speeds rose up to 14 knots for a few hours and we dared to hope that this was the start of favourable conditions. We revelled in the breeze for a few hours this morning until lunch came around and forced us to a crawl, by the time evening has come about we have the engines back on and are back to crossing our fingers for better wind tomorrow.On a more positive note we did manage to bring in a smallish Wahoo today on one of the lines (Photo attached, it was bigger than it looks in the photo, promise) which made for a very nice lunch. Cooked up by Paul who seems to be taking most of the cheffing on himself to no complaints from myself or Drew as he is. read more...

Adele 1 - Adele 1 log - Day 16 - windless seas and stolen fish

Afternoon all,It is the evening of our fifth day at sea on our passage to St Lucia and the famously reliable trade winds seem to be off trading somewhere else. Throughout last night our true wind speed dropped steadily from 11 knots down to around 7 and has stayed there throughout the day. A quick chatter amongst the crew this morning and we decided to bang on the motors and focus on fishing. Our fishing successes seem to range from desperate to downright unbelievable. The first "success" if you can call it that was Drew and Paul bringing in a nightmarish looking creature in the middle of the night we have dubbed a ratfish because we dont know what its called. With oil black scales and a set of mismatched large fangs we can assume its a scavenger and threw the creepy fella back. read more...

Adele 1 - Adele 1 log - Day 14 - Smooth sailing

Evening folks,We are coming to the end of our third day at sea now, nothing too dramatic going on at the moment. The start of this leg on Wednesday all ran smoothly with a great view of all the boats leaving Cape Verde. We lost the wind coming around the neighbouring islands and like a few other boats in the surrounding area turned on the motors for an hour to get us out to open sea. The wind conditions have been fairly consistent from 10 knots up to 17 and we have been flying the parasail since leave Mindelo and making steady progress.It seems there are less fish in the ocean than we had been hoping with this leg so far only producing one small Skipjack Tuna for me and a small but pretty Dorado for Paul.In the absence of hardcore adrenaline pumping fishing action we have taken to. read more...

Adele 1 - Adele 1 log - Day 12 - Torn sails and broken buses

Afternoon all,Fair bit to catch up on in this log as we have been too busy to get it written while in Mindelo.Starting with Friday evening our first dosage of drama. Around 1am while I was on watch the GPS system and autopilot decided to shut down at the exact time of a fairly drastic wind change. Add this sudden loss of control to the fact we were flying our parasail Asymetrically and the resulting swing of the boat managed to wrap the parasail around the furler. As all the crew rushed up on deck we worked to turn the boat to release the parasail only to realise we had just succesfully wrapped it around the furler a second time. A moment of realisation and some shouted instructions and we were back at it working the actions in reverse. Parasail tangled on the mast spreaders and three. read more...