Day 15

After nearly 2000 miles of trailing a line since leaving Recife we finally caught a fish! It was a beautiful coloured Dorado which was swiftly and painlessly dispatched and taken to the galley. Derek will no doubt perform his usual miracle and convert it into something delicious.

The wind increased during the night so we took down the flying jib and put up the outer jib. Even so we still managed a good speed so much so that we are now back on track to reach our first Caribbean destination tomorrow – Thursday – Union Island in the Grenadine group. We are promised an afternoon of swimming off the ship which everyone is looking forward to. Just seeing land after 15 days of nothing but ocean and the very, very occasional ship will be a novelty.

Last night we were all invited to a sing song in the bar led by Val. Some of the crew displayed a previously hidden talent for singing – others less so!! Regardless of talent, it was a great fun evening.

After Captain Barbara’s talk and instruction a few days ago, on celestial navigation we were all given a chance to use the sextant to take readings and convert this into our latitude position. After doing the arithmetic our position differed from the GPS by 2.2 miles. We did not even try to persuade Barbara to have the GPS calibration checked at the first opportunity.

Jude wants an ice cream, so we have promised her that we will stop at the first ice cream shop we pass.

Forward Starboard: JC (Watch Leader), Margaret, Amelia, Margaret, Jude, Beth, Chris, Brian, Jim.