Be The Jam

Position: Saya de Mallia Bank

S 08°16.31'

E 060°32.11'

Heading 280 degrees with a moderate wind from the SE.

Just came down the mast. Got up this morning (0945 hrs) a little late because I'm on late watch (0200- 0500), to find the aerial for the radio had come undone. The sea has got quite a swell on it today, and it was suggested I go up the mast! Greeeeaaatttt! So up I went with a few tools and took it down. Well it wasn't that easy, it meant swinging around the top of the mast for half an hour, but managed to bring down the aerial, which is good, to replace would have cost a few bob. We lost the wind direction finder the other day, we noticed it was coming undone, but it was nearly dark, then we went through some storms that night, it was gone the next morning.

1925 hrs

Been a great day for sailing. We are still heading 310 degrees which is bang on course for Mahé Island in the Seychelles . Made good progress again today, lets hope this wind stays with us all the way to Mahé. Ate the last of the fish today! That means we have all eaten over 6Kgs of fish each over the last day and a half. I think we are going to turn into fish soon. We snagged another fish today, it was to big. We think it might have been a shark, Rupert thinks he saw what appeared to be a shark following this morning. Anyway it didn't take the lure, but it ripped one of the hooks clean of and bent the other one badly. The ratchet on the reel went out really quickly, we were lucky not to loose the whole line.

Looking at the chart; the distance to Mahé now looks like peanuts, when we arrive we will have done over 3000 miles in a straight line (that's not taking into consideration the fact that we sailed all the way, not in a straight line in other words) since we left the port of Semarang (The Black Hole) Indonesia. We just topped up the diesel tank on the engine, we only managed to get 25 Lt. into it, just shows how little we have used the engine on the crossing (The capacity is 165 Lt.).

Well hears signing off I can smell that ice cold draught beer on the horizon, I'll have dreams about it tonight!