A painted ship

Coordinates:25 47.38 S 173 03.6 E
Bearing:175 T
Boat Speed: 2 to 3 Kn
Wind Direction:NNE
Wind Strength: 1 to 7 knots
Sea state: swell from SE
Crew health:fine

Last night it was a little like the Ancient Mariners Ship - " as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean"
No albatross about but totally becalmed all night . A few puffs of wind early morning but not much all day. We have the large red light weather furling Reacher sail up and that is giving two or three knots plus the current is adding 1.4 knots !
The excitement today was to be buzzed by an Airforce Orion plane . It circled Katipo after swooping to what appeared to be about 100 metres at the most above the water. We had a friendly chat over the VHF radio . They were just checking boat name , last port . and port of destination including ETA . I could not help much on the last point and I told them the winds were light and it was hard to know.

I thought we had caught a fish this morning when checking the line at first light. It was a fair sized Wahoo but was just a ghastly corpse
mainly head and back bone. Hungry teeth tearing at the flesh had been at work in the black depths during the night, maybe squid?? You would not want to fall over board round here!
Very hot again but all is well and we are making steady if slow progress. So much better than the 45 knots of wind at times on the way up here in July.
We have checked the boat speed and distance run each day by several ways against the reading of boat log device in the side of the hull under water. This little wheel which spins around around as the water goes past must have been invaded by weed or barnacles !
However it is not important it just means that initially we had gone faster than we had thought.

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