After several days of happy, carefree
sailing the day yesterday was primarily characterised by (comparably minor)
mishaps. First, when putting up our mizzen staysail the shackle at the top of
the sail suddenly opened resulting in the entire sail to drop into the water. It
took the combined effort of 4 of us to slowly pull it back on board while the
boat was still moving. Luckily no damage was done and we are now making the
most of the trade winds with both our spinnaker and mizzen staysail again.
Later that day, Dieter and myself began feeling increasingly ill, suffering
from flu symptoms and even fever. We both lay down in our cabins and were
perfectly taken care of by Liesel as well as our board medic, Markus. As we
were still feeling quite dodgy in the evening, however, we skipped our night
watch which was consequently kindly taken over by the still healthy part of our
crew. Luckily after a good night of rest both of us are feeling much better and
we resumed the normal boat routine.
Since the lures on our boat seem to be
highly specialised on catching small female (you can tell the sex by the shape
of the nose) mahi-mahi fish we discontinued our fishing efforts for a while. We
already had to throw some of them back into the water as we do not really know
what to do with them anymore (although we did have an excellent fresh mahi-mahi
cervices with vegetables the other day). Today we put of the line again in the
hope of finally catching a tuna/bonito for a change. In order to deter the
smaller mahi-mahi ladies we chose a bait of a size sufficiently large for a
blue whale. Let’s see what happens…
We are hoping to be able to celebrate the
“Bergfest” (Markus: “Mountain celebration”) at some point tomorrow. By zooming
out as far as possible we can even begin to see the Thula and our destination,
St Lucia, on the same screen. It’s about time: Having had a 3 meter high swell
from the side for several consecutive days now, the individual morale at times
suffers a little. The boat is rolling from one side to the other permanently,
making it nearly impossible to carry out even the most natural actions normally
(most importantly: sleep).
Despite these minor “nuisances” we are greatly
enjoying every minute of the trip, looking forward to the second half and
wishing everyone back home a happy first advent (and Flo all the best for her
birthday!!!)
All the best,
Jakob