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Lunch on the high seas
We celebrated New Year’s Eve with pizza, a rum and coke, and counted down to midnight – Cape Verdean time. We tried to make some calls on the sat phone but no one wanted to answer. If you got a message that was hard to understand it might have been us. After two weeks of not seeing anything we finally came across something interesting - we made friends with a whale. We noticed Melville (Adam named him) the Minkie whale for the first time swimming off our starboard beam. He swam a long side us diving under the boat, crossing over to the port side, and back again. He would surface and then dive down again and show his white underside. It was really amazing and Adam scurried around the boat trying to get a video of Melville breaking the surface. I’m not sure whether he was lonely and in need of company or whether he was just very social but Melville stayed with us for a full 24 hours. Well technically we couldn’t see him after dark so we can’t confirm that he was there but as soon as the sun came up he was right there. We think that we lost him during the second night. We are down to 330 nm to Barbados but the weather has taken a turn for the worse. We’ve had one squall after another, sloppy waves, and inconsistent winds. Last night we had a big squall with 40 knot gusts that left me a little shaken. I was woken up by the sound of the sails flogging and the whisker poles smashing around. I went up on deck and found Adam trying to furl the #1 headsail in the rain. The # 3 was up but it was flying free (attached to the boat only at the top and bottom) and the boat kept rounding up. We heeled hard to starboard and everything went flying down below – Adam was in the cockpit and he said that he felt like he was climbing up to reach the portside. From down below it felt like the boat was trying to go to port but the sail was forcing it over to starboard and I was sure that something would have to give or we would be in serious trouble. I helped Adam to furl the #1 and he took over the wheel from flemming and was able to keep us steady, with a lot of effort. Eventually the squall passed and we surveyed the damage and found that we came out of the ordeal virtually unscathed. We were astonished that there was no damaged to the sails or the whisker poles, and the only casualties for the night were the boat hook and yet another winch handle. Adam later lost the halyard for the #3 but we are hoping to run it back down the mast. We are out of fresh food, except a few tomatoes so we are sprouting mung beans and eating canned peaches but with any luck we will be in Barbados in a few days.