Monday 29th December

dawnysmiff
2 days ago
3 min read

(Covering the last 24 hours)

Yesterday lunchtime Paul got in the water to clean the bottom of the boat. He said it felt so good to be able to move his body in a completely different way after days of rowing — a rare moment of freedom out here.

He did a grand job too, scraping off the barnacles and leaving us with a clean bottom once again. It’s always a bit nerve-racking getting into the water until you’ve had a proper look around below the surface through the goggles, just to check there’s nothing with teeth hanging about! That said, Paul was wearing a shark-repellent magnet on his ankle, which comes highly recommended.

Between that and our anti-marlin stripes on the hull, we started joking that maybe all these precautions are actually scaring everything away — because we’ve hardly seen any wildlife at all. In fact, we haven’t even seen other signs of life like ships or boats.

The only presence out here has been Wee Hours — the boat I rowed the Pacific in — still tracking along with us. They were visible all night on AIS, just north of our position. It’s strangely comforting seeing a familiar name out there in such a big ocean.

🌬️ Light Winds, Hard Miles

There’s still very little wind, and what we do have is coming from a slightly more southerly direction. Because of that, we’re holding a higher course than originally planned to optimise boat speed rather than pointing directly at Antigua and crawling.

These light winds look set to hang around for at least another couple of days. It’s a real slog, but I keep reminding myself that it’s nowhere near as bad as that night earlier in the week. Perspective helps.

🌙 Night Sky & Strange Sights

The night sky was crystal clear. The moon is currently in a waxing gibbous phase, on its way toward a full moon, and it’s getting pretty bright now.

A bright moon is a gift in many ways — it makes the night feel far less gloomy and gives you just enough light to work by — but it does mean you lose some of the stars.

By my second night shift, the moon had already set. It was much darker again, but the payoff was far more stars… and some very strange goings-on.

I saw quite a few shooting stars, which are actually tiny bits of space debris — meteors — burning up as they hit Earth’s atmosphere at incredible speed. But I also saw something else.

One light in particular was three times bigger and brighter than anything else in the sky, far too high above the horizon to be a boat. It flashed blue a couple of times, then vanished completely. I spotted a few more similar lights during the shift, but that first one was by far the brightest.

Meteor?

Aircraft?

UFO?

Who knows. The Atlantic has a habit of keeping its secrets.

Right — time for sweet and sour chicken for breakfast. Because once again, normal rules don’t apply out here.

Dawn

“Together Paul and I are rowing home — the long way round.”

Hometown Row

Leg 1 – La Gomera to Antigua

Leg 2 – Antigua to Florida

Leg 3 – Canada to the UK

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