With a few sunny days behind us, can you imagine the excitement when we not only made 20 litres of drinking water but also had enough to wash some clothes!

Our sense of smell has been heightened with the lack of pollution out here and the clean scent of detergent sent our noses into overdrive. With a washing line set up to catch the sun and wind, the clothes were dry in no time.

The next bit of excitement happened two nights ago. Lin had just settled down for her two hour break at night, when Rachel spotted a light on the horizon. As we’re out of the main shipping lanes, we haven’t seen any ships for some time. She thought she could see a green light which would indicate the ship wasn’t on a direct heading towards us but as it got closer, the green suddenly turned to bright red. Calling out to Lin to get all the equipment switched on inside, including AIS Radar, GPS, Sea Me and VHF Radio. It was the radio that gave us our clue as the support yacht Kilcullen was calling for us. It seems they’d been trying to track us down all day but our stealth boat approach was giving them a bit of a challenge. It was really spooky when they got closer as we could see their spotlight searching the water for us and the internal lights as someone was below deck cooking up their curry! When they came alongside, it felt like a visit from the Black Pearl in the deep dark depths of night, as we could hear all the creaking and groaning noises and the occasional flapping of the sail as the boat was battling in the big swells. It was like something straight out of Pirates of the Caribbean (had we arrived already)! After a quick chat, they went on their way to find Silver Cloud and we think we saw them a couple of times during the night and following day while visiting other rowing boats in the area.

Yesterday we faced quite a big decision. We’d been aware for some time now that there’s life Jim but not as we know it, growing on the hull of our boat. Some of the other crews we know have been in to scrape off the little suckers but we hadn’t really felt confident enough to do that yet. We had a chat with our friends Joe & Andrew on Jaydubyoo and they said scraping off these critters had made a huge difference to their boat speed. So there was nothing else for it, someone had to go in! What some of you may not know is that Lin had to work really hard to overcome her fear of water before setting off on this challenge but was quite willing to go in to do this job. However, Rachel is much more confident in the water having done scuba diving and surfing etc. so she stepped up for the job on this occasion.

Mid afternoon the water flattened a bit and with Lin on fin watch, Rachel tied a rope on and with some trepidation, slipped over the side. It was amazing, the water is the most fantastic shade of blue and crystal clear, not to mention around 5,000 meters deep in this area. Armed with mask, snorkel and scraper, she started to work her way from the front to back of the boat to remove the thousands of little critters off the bottom of the boat. She was soon joined by some friendly company in the form of a rather large fish that we think was a tuna but we couldn’t find the label! He was an impressive specimen about 3ft long. He was a happy fella, thinking all his fishy birthdays and Christmas’s had come at one as he munched his way through the detached and homeless critters. He did get quite close a couple of times, so much so that he nearly got Rachel’s foot in his face, which made him back off fairly swiftly. He also seemed to get a little impatient if Rachel wasn’t scraping quickly enough and swam around looking at her for more critters before chasing after them into the deep blue sea. Thankfully he was the only creature we saw but a container ship appeared fairly close by while Rachel was in the water so Lin had double duty of watching that on the radar etc. too.

Rachel was rewarded for her hard work with a much deserved hair wash while Lin watched on with hair wash envy!!!

The exercise has proved to be very worthwhile as the boat seems to be moving much more smoothly through the water and we think we clocked up much better mileage last night.

Answers to questions:-

Kim in Denmark – yes we do write everything down in a book as in the paper kind. This is our ships log and is also doubling as our record of all the messages and a daily diary. The reason we’re doing this is so that we can type it all up when we get back and have it all to look back on. It may also form part of a book that we’re thinking about writing. We don’t type it straight into our computer as we haven’t really had enough power to run the computer for that long.

Kim in San Francisco Bay – Great to hear about all the support from across America from Yachtpals.com – please feel free to forward the messages onto Rachel@atlanticrowingchallenge.co.uk and we can pick them up on our return. Also, I don’t know if it would be of interest to you all, but we’d be happy to pay a visit to give a talk to you guys about the challenge for the cost of our expenses and a donation to the charity.

Ned – There isn’t a gauge on the water maker to tell us if it’s working as minimum speed but we check the water regularly when we’re making it to make sure it’s tastes ok. We can also hear when it slows down if the power is getting low and know that we shouldn’t run it then as it won’t be as effective.

Dr G – thank you for the advice on the deck GPS. We’re not really too bothered about not having it so we’re going to leave it well alone for now and check the wiring etc. on our return. Don’t want to risk damaging the internal one at this stage.

Andrew Grose @ Bushnell UK – thank you for the message, the last bit was missing though but if it was about the Bolle sunglasses, they’re being used all the time the sun is shining and hopefully we’ll have plenty of photos we can share with you on our return. They’ve been great too, thank you.

Karon @ New Wave – the kit has been great thank you, especially the leggings as the nights are really cold. We wore the tops going through the start so there should be some good photos you can use from that. The rowing shoes have caused a few sores and blisters but we’re doing ok with them. I think they’ve stretched a bit when they got doused by the big waves!

Home comforts that we’re missing:-

Our men – hugs & kisses!

Lin’s son Liam

Comfy beds

Flushable Loo

Hot bath

Being able to stand up

Clean fluffy towels

Nice cup of tea

The news – what’s happening in the world today?

Sleeping longer than 1.5 hours

Accurate alarm clock

That’s all for now – we’ll be back again soon.

Love & hugs, Lin & Rachel