As planned, we left the Mackay berth at 08:00, refuelled and were underway at 08:45. The sail was good all around! Even thought we had virtually no wind for a good deal of the daylight portion of the trip, the seas were flat and we were making good time under ‘Cast Iron Main’ and tidal assist. The night saw us finding some great 10 kts Northerlies which saw us breifly touch 7.8 kts with an overall avergare of well over 6 kts.
Back to he start; as I said last blog, we were required to thread our way through the anchored vessels and while I spoke of this earlier, the photos left may give a better impression than word.Once clear of these we had a very relaxed trip with time for, reading on the aft deck, scones (among my best to date) and photos of such sights as the magic sunset as shown.
With that said, the trip was not without its highlights with no less than 5 whale sightings, one of which was a big fella just drifting on the surface only 50 m from the boat. The others were more distant but much more active with leaps and splashes and all the spectacle that whales can provide. On the opposite end of the size spectrum, we were joined by tiny flying fish for some time. These guys would leap out of the water and ‘fly’ with just the tips of their tail in the sea and sort of ‘skip’ at tremendous speed for up to 100 m – presumably getting away from some predator. An amazing sight! Last but not least was a welcome return of the dolphins. These had been scare in the northern waters so the group of 10 or so that played on our bow this morning were yet another spectacle to be enjoyed.
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