The mood is very light hearted on the boat today and over breakfast Holger recounted a story about his black dog, as I’ve told you before they're farmers in Germany and have a good enterprise producing energy and prime steak. He recounted a story of his big black Newfoundland dog that used to roam the many acres of land at will. Given his freedom of the area the dog took himself to the local villages to visit and explore. As any young dog would do he found himself the centre of attention in these villages by the other young lady dogs. Whilst taking advantage of the situation the Newfoundland became somewhat of a Romeo to some new a bounder and a cad to others!
This situation carried on for a number of months where the dog would return to some of his favourite spots and engage in doggy delights. Holger goes on to say that he would receive telephone calls about his dogs antics and was frequently asked to come and collect his dog who was enjoying too much of the other lady dogs in the areas from the owners. Holger clearly didn’t want to upset anyone with this and duly collected his dog. Some time passed and Holger thought that’ll issues had been resolved with his dog wandering off and engaging with others. That is until about. Year later when the phone started to ring and the local residents asked Holger if he would like to come and collect his puppies, this didn’t jut happen once but. Number of occasions. Holger went on to say that the local villages are full of Newfoundland cross type dogs in North East Germany because of his “Schwartz hund”. This little story had us rolling around in stitches for a while. It is amazing what being at sea can do to you after 11 days.
Moving on, we had a quiet motor evening yesterday and covered 112nm yesterday. We have topped up 50 litres of fuel and we have 671 nm to go. After breakfast we set the Code 0 on the port side and caught the start of the 8/10 knot NE wind. This has lasted us lol day until 17.30 when the wind died.
During the day Holger phoned his weather routing contact and got the latest German forecast having been given our position.. the advice was to continue to Push west at best speed to get in front of a trough of pressure and to extend this as soon as possible. As the wind died we took a very quick ocean swim and the chance to wash off and started the motor to push west as per the routing instruction.
During the day a line was cast to the water using the same technique as yesterday, this time success, we managed to land a fish. I have no idea what type of fish it is, or if it is big or mall, however, it was filleted and marinaded in the fridge within 30minutes of being landed. It was about 8/10 lbs in weight, a little yellow in colour with silver scales and looked like a fish. For those who will see me back in the uk I have photographs that I can show you to determine the species .
In other exciting news we learnt that we will be having more cotton buds stuck up our noses and down our throats in St Lucia as the government who are happy to accept us have changed their policy on crossings. So arrivals by boat will need to quarantine until the PCR tests have been received . We have been assured that the results will be turned round in 24 /48 hours . It would be incredibly frustrating to reach St Lucia do then have to get on a plane without seeing a small amount of the island. As we have now been informed we have to stay on the quarantine pontoon we will make the most of the time no prepre the boat for her stay in St Lucia,
That is it for today’s exciting instalment of boat life (ich habe viel zu tun)