Today we sailed slowly all day under a heavy grey sky over a lumpy sea. It rained off and on. At 08:00 there was a significant shift in the wind, backing to the east north east for four hours, then clocking round to the east south east by noon. The boat’s track on the chart plotter weebles and wobbles but it doesn’t fall down. Despite that, we had a nice 149 mile noon to noon run. That was heartening. We are figuring six more days to Mauritius. Also at noon, we had a fish on! Laura reeled it in, a gloriously colourful Mahi-Mahi that came fighting all the way. We got up all the way to Lars leaning out to gaff it, and it said, “on second thought, I won’t be staying to dinner.” Off it went, a beautiful flash of blue, green and gold. There is always a dichotomy of feeling when we lose a fighting fish. Sadness that we won’t be eating fish for supper, and a secret joy at seeing such a beautiful creature go free. That was the highlight of our day. The worse part of the day is the radio net. For the past two days it’s been just terrible reception. Whirs and whistles and beeps, and very little propagation. It has reached the point of multiple relays, which is very frustrating for all involved. We’ve tried several different channels. Mixed results. 8B seems to reach the most boats today, who knows what will work tomorrow. This heavy overcast sky, pouring rain, and squally weather seem to be the root problem according to the general consensus. At sunset , the sky was still filled with squalls of thunderheads pouring rain stretched out in front if us as far as we could see.
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