Thursday 25 November 2004

Our breakfast was interrupted by the sound of our fishing rod. Jallu started to reel in the line. This sounds very easy and simple, but when there is 200 meters of line to reel in and the prey doesn’t want to surrender or cooperate, it becomes another matter. The winner of the battle is decided by who gets tired first, the fish or the fisherman. This time it was a draw. The line and the ‘bite’ were suppose to be strong enough for anything, but it wasn’t. Jallu’s commented that it was a good thing that we didn’t get the beast on to the boat, it would have taken a whole bottle of vodka to knock the damn thing out. It was a big one and this is not another exaggerated fishing tale. Since we didn’t manage to catch any fish, we had to settle for fillet steaks with mushroom sauce. We are still heading south for a couple more days, then west to St. Lucia. 24-hour sailing, 151 miles.

Friday 26 November 2004

We are beginning to get into a roiutine in the morning preparations. Whoever is routered for the night shift, starts to cook the breakfast, fill the fridge with drinks and sets up the fishing rod. This morning the breakfast was scrambled eggs a’la Heikki and strong coffee. Again our breakfast was interrupted by the fishing rod. Within 20 minutes Jallu managed to reel in a decent sized fish. Tomorrow we will eat fish again, at least as a starter course. In the afternoon Heikki managed to catch another fish, named after its size as the Atlantic Vendace (Vendace Atlanticus). It wasn’t one of Hessu’s proudest moments. 24-hour sailing, 150 miles

Saturday 27 November 2004

We started this morning with Bach, however the music was Värttinä and Bach was the champagne. The reason for celebration was our having sailed 1000 miles, with less than 2000 miles to go. The captain thanked the crew for an outstanding performance and the crew kept praising the captain for outstanding leadership. At noon we opened another bottle of Bach. This time, the reason was that Esmeralda had sailed its first 5000 miles. Make was in charge of fishing, not a bad afternoon. Out of three fish that were caught, we only managed to get one of them onto the boat. According to Make, it was at least and inch bigger than the previous ones. Our navigator Santtu gave us further instructions from Finland to keep on sailing south, even though our true destination lies to the west.
24-hour sailing, 140 miles

Sunday 28 November 2004

By captain’s order we had to start our morning with champagne….who are we to argue!! The reason was that we had crossed the 30th time zone. Jallu and Hessu celebrated the first Advent by singing Christmas carols. It was truly an unforgettable moment!

The weather is 30C and sunny, however we hope for stronger winds. Tonight we will change our course and head west. At the moment we are 54th in the official ARC list. 24-hour sailing 150 miles

Monday 29 November 2004

Back to work, no more champagne or singing. The weather was hot and humid and finally we were blessed with stronger winds. Today the wind was almost perfect, 7-10 mps, blowing in the right direction. Our cruising speed aveaged at 7-8 knots.

We ran low on fresh food. Oranges were moldy, so were some of the lemons, which will be needed if we keep on getting fish. Today Heikki got the biggest catch so far. The Dorado is so big that it didn’t fit on the frying pan. It had to be cut in four pieces just to squeeze it into oven. You can imagine the broad grin on Heikki’s face. Today we further celebrated reaching the half way point. 24-hour sailing 149 miles.