We’re coming to the end of our second week aboard Boudicea and we’ve finally found a shift pattern which seems to work well for us. We’ve had some good consistent higher mileage days recently, and there’s no doubt that this is due to our daily scheduled Lady Gaga ‘power hour’ sessions where we manage to both get on the oars together. It’s fair to say that powering down waves in the middle of the Atlantic with ‘poker face’ blaring out and dolphins either side of you is a fairly surreal experience , but definitely one to be remembered!
Talking of wildlife, we’re feeling very lucky to have seen so much already. On top of the three whales we saw on the very first day, we’ve seen dolphins on five separate occasions and had three sharks follow the boat. We also had a moment of shock on Thursday when a huge shadow appeared about 4 meters away from the boat whilst we were surfing down a wave. We both stood up (very quickly!) in the middle of the boat and watched as it surfaced and did 3 laps around the boat. 2.5 metres in length with an electric blue tail, we’re not entirely sure what it was, but will inevitably be ‘googling it’ when we get home. For the time being, he/she has been renamed ‘monster fish’.
Unfortunately the weather isn’t playing ball at the moment and we’re currently sat on para-anchor waiting for the winds and swell to turn. Fingers crossed the weather will return to normal shortly and we’ll be able to continue heading west to Antigua. Sitting still is doing nothing to appease either of our competitive natures and we’re looking forward to getting back in to ‘race mode’. The only good thing about para anchor is we have had time to do some minor repairs and also had a visit from a sun fish by the side of the boat.
We had a surreal but lovely Christmas. Our take of dehydrated turkey casserole, stuffing and gravy and Loads of chocolate and Christmas tunes throughout the day.
We love receiving messages from home, so please keep them coming. Apologies if you don’t always receive a reply, our satellite phone is somewhat akin to a moody child and it’s send/receive record is questionable to say the least.
Fingers crossed for some better weather in the coming week :)
Big love and happy Christmas.
Jem and Lauren
