4 / 2 / 2011

POS: 22d 49.4S, 33d 35.8W

Winds are finally picking up as we get down into under 600 NM from Rio! The day counting & calculations until arrival are getting hectic, with everyone giving different estimates for average speeds & some serious weather chart studies going on. The widely accepted most realistic guess of arrival time is Monday night/Tuesday morning. Hold thumbs for us!

So our fishing record on Me2Me has been somewhat strange. It started off well in the early days, we caught our Snoek on day 2 (which was released) & shortly thereafter our first yellow fin Tuna, which did not meet the same forgiving fate but quite frankly tasted amazing. Then came a smallish.. thing (that'll have to do I'm afraid) who got given a second chance too & on that same day we caught our much exalted Dorado which, despite being quite possible the ugliest fish ever, tasted amazing! Alex & Murray then brought their element of magic to the sport, managing to lose a whole set of reel line & lure over board - each! Not only did they lose any lures but the two most successful lures we had! So we were down to two pink things (which Andre felt would only catch fish near Cape Town) & a blue number who swam with a rather impressive side step. We managed to hook a real impressive Dorado on one though, but in the process of waiting for him to tire on the line, the hook was bent & dinner just vanished!

Neptune then upped the stakes though & we lost one pink lure to some monster silver flash a couple of days ago. Then yesterday a resounding snap & colourful language from Murray announced the breaking of another line, as the swivel & trace shot back into the boat narrowly missing urray's head! We looked back to see an enormous Sail fish thrashing across the waves, swimming so fast he seemed to skip along the surface. It was an incredible sight, though it meant we were down to one lure & that the poor chap had the other embedded in his beak - not ideal!

Today started in a buzz of excitement as a regular 14-15 knot breeze raced us towards Rio. It all ended in fiasco though when, while running Dirty Dorris this morning, Derek suddenly realised there was nothing coming out of the water-maker exhaust pipe. Racing to turn it all off, we found the pressure had somehow spiked & the pump blown! After everyone settled down, a real mood of sombre reality hit as we all considered 4 days of limited water supply. We forgot though that we are in fact sailing this race with McGiver's grand-pa & now, 2 hours & one lid of a mussel tin later, Diesel  Derek the Magician has Dorris Running & fresh, pure water rolling out of the water-maker once again. The man is a genius. The University of Me2Me has honoured him with a DSc. in Mechanical Peanut-&-Paper-Clip repairs. NOTHING is stopping this boat from getting to Rio.