Drains, Damn Traveller and Dorado!

They say things happen in threes…

Now the trip starts getting interesting. As is the case with most crossings things started to break. First we lost the main sheet travel car, which for the non-yotties amongst you is the slidy thing on the long sticky out thing that pulls out the big white flappy thing. It’s important anyway. Made up of many ball bearings the thing had lifted itself off the track and spilled its load of small plastic balls over the deck and into the gunwales. Picture yours truly scurrying around on hands and knees in a lumpy sea, on a wet deck, trying to retrieve said balls. Without this car hauling out and securing the main sail is a little difficult. Will have to ponder on that.

The second thing to break was our electric sink drainer. Because our galley sink sits at water level we are not able to allow gravity to drain our washing up water, and so we’ve had to install an electric drainer (this after breaking a manual pump). We weren’t aware of this breakage until the galley floor was soaking in old coffee, pasta sauce and soap suds. Until this is fixed we have two choices: let the washing up build up throughout our trip, or wash up in the forward heads. I reckon we’ve got enough kitchenware to see us through without the need for such trivialities as a kitchen sink.

With these two rather important features broken we were getting a bit tetchy. Our bodies hadn’t adjusted to the night watches and we were still motoring. As the second day aboard came to a close, the entire sky bathed in a dreamy pink as the sun dipped its head, I decided to go for a nap. This was shortly broken by Liz banging on the hatch, shouting something urgent. Grabbing the important tools like video camera I clambered up on deck to find both Liz and Millie jumping around excitedly at the back of the boat. Behind Esper, just a few feet away, was a green and yellow blur darting across our stern. Dorado! Liz had hooked a dorado! In a flash of teamwork Liz pulled in the line and I dropped the fishing net into the water and within moments we had a dorado on the back of the boat. Our first official successful troll! Liz wore the biggest grin that evening as I gutted and filleted her catch, which she then griddled with new potatoes, rocket, butter and plenty of lemon juice. Man I forgot just how good dorado tastes!

Go Liz!
Go Liz!

 Later that evening, as if to congratulate Liz, a favourable north easterly picked up and so we threw out the sails, turned the engine off, and took it in turns to get our first decent nap.

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