[password] radioactiv
[position] 32 10.068S 175 25.052E
[weather] Baro 1024. 85% light cloud cover, wind east, nor east approx 15 knots.
[speed] 10.1knts
[heading] 170M
[status] Hello Folks, apologies on not sending through a YIT update this morning, we have had a very exciting day of sailing today! Today started (for Sasha) at 2:56am when she finally awoke 4 minutes before her shift started. She relieved Mike from the helm and he went to bed, for a well earned sleep. After a good 3 hours sailing Tim-o-tei came up and took over just before 6am. And Sasha went back to bed and had a lovely sleep in until 9am ish. Once up the boys started to explain how exciting the morning (that Sasha had missed) had been. They had caught a skipjack, but not kept it, there had been random fishing boats talking on channel 16 (the first VHF chatter we have heard for days) and they had found more dead baby squid on the nets, which again Mike had thrown at Tim.
Breakfast was a vast array of culinary delights, Tim had left over curried sausages, Mike had an up and go over muesli and Sash drank the bit of left over up and go.
For lunch we settled into a few bits of roasted chicken each that Sasha had popped in the oven, and then we had warm blackberry and apple pies with cups of tea.
After sitting on the deck for a bit Mike and Tim both shouted shark! Tim exclaimed ?it looks dead?.. and then Sasha finally got a glimpse of it and thought it looks like a small manta ray, but then we all clicked! It was a MOONFISH! We kid you not!! We thought it was either a sunfish or a moonfish, we are not entirely sure how to tell the difference between the two, but it had these two big pictorial fins that when above the water looked very much like a shark fin, and a very large round body, with a white underside (which is why Sasha thought it was a manta). Amazing eh! We went from seeing nothing for days to this.. and then.. YES FOLKS it gets better!!! Mike and Tim both managed to spot a killer whale breaching out of the water, fully jumping out of the water! Sasha was in the galley at the time so she missed it, but got up on deck quick smart to see if it would breach again? alas it did not.
Apart from that the boys have been hand steering again today, top speed was taken out by Tim at 16.6knots, he was (to say the least) very excited when he got to shout out that speed!
Tonight we are going to have the last of the passage meals, Chilli Chicken and Garlic Fried Rice, and then tomorrow once we are (fingers crossed) nicely tucked up on the Opua quarantine dock we will have roast chicken with roast potatoes and peas!
That about covers off today?s excitement, oh! we?ve had a couple of 200plus nautical mile days too, which has been excellent after a very slow windless start. Oh and we are back in shorts and t-shirts today, was a lovely warm day, check out that baro it just keeps going up!
All well on board
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