Theodora - 29 & 30 / 11 -

Well, having commented on the lack of wildlife yesterday we had a spectacular show from a pod of dolphins this afternoon. About thirty of them came racing in from behind us on both sides and as we were in a three metre swell we were treated to the sight of them leaping effortlessly out of the waves. They played around in the bow wave for a while until a flying fish leapt out from the boats wake. At that point the dolphins raced away in a line with all leaping high out of the water obviously chasing a school of food. It was a fabulous sight.

It has been a restless night with the wind blowing between 18 to 25 knots up until about 05:30 when it has died down a touch with the maximum being 20 knots. Boat speed has been good but that combined with a tricky swell has made for a bouncy night. Nevertheless since 13:00 yesterday we have averaged over 7.5 knots. It’s also been the coolest night of the journey so far, however the fact that the moon is waning and rising later made for some of the best night skies we have seen to date.

Our only problem or irritant to date has been that we are having to run the generator more than we planned. The reason for this seems to be the fridge and freezer which are pulling almost ten amps between them. The frozen food should run out in three days time when we plan to turn the freezer off to see if that helps our level of electricity consumption.

Lots of boat jobs to be done this morning after breakfast, rigging check, laundry, showers, and a general cleaning of the boat, this should keep us busy until lunchtime.

We now have under 2,000 miles to go to St Lucia but it does mean that we are approximately one third of the way through the journey. We intend to keep following the wind to the south west for a few more days until we can pick up the more easterly trade winds to the south of Cape Verde.