Back under sail!

5 June 2013

Yesterday morning at the first dawn, we could finally switch off the engine again The wind has dropped a bit to 20-22 knots and slowly turned to north-north-east. Since we are heading east, we could take out all the reefs and continued under full sail around lunchtime wit a speed of 7.5 knots. The last three days were a bit less comfortable: trying to get eastward against 30 knots of wind (7 Bft). We tacked every 6 to 10 hours to be able to follow the counter current, which worked out pretty well! But with all hatched closed, and swell of 4 metres we are very happy that the wind, current and swell is much more comfortable now. The salt is partly rinsed off of the ship, the hatches are open and we gently rock into the right direction. The forecast is good and we aim to visit Réunion this weekend.
This morning one of the deckhands started fishing, while the chef asked us not to do so, since we have caught quite some fish already. Just as the first mate asked him to stop fishing, he had caught a big mahi-mahi. We could have had worse circumstances…
The ‘Europa’ crew has seen several Sperm whales yesterday, which came quite close to the ship. We have had company of a Wandering albatross; which is quite uncommon for this latitude and a Barau’s petrel. And of course we keep on enjoying the many flying fishes that beautifully fly over the water and dive back into the ocean. We say goodbye to you from a very sunny Indian ocean.