Last night the seas calmed down significantly and this morning the sea was significantly calmer. This is what I had imagined the whole journey was going to be like. Being on the 3am to 6am watch meant we were able to see the sun rise.
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| Wonderful sunrise |
The cabin downstairs was stinking. I mean really stinking, a rancid mix of bad feet and good old fashioned BO. I hadn't spent too much time below deck so I'm sure I wasn't the main cause. I think Brian's feet had a lot to answer for.
In fact none of us had had a wash since leaving the hotel on Thursday morning. None of us were expecting to be at sea for this long. I decided as the boat was no longer rocking around and the sun was shining I was going to have a wash, so I stripped off on the front deck and hosed myself down. Fortunately, no diesel came out of the hose so we either had plenty of water still or Berk was wrong about mixing up the fuel/water tanks.
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| Beautiful! It doesn't get any better than this. |
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| Time to catch some rays |
We had a cooked breakfast and cups of tea. It's amazing how much everyone's spirits pick up when the sun was shining and instead of everyone falling asleep we were chatting, joking, telling tales and actually enjoying being on the high seas. We were heading for Bolinao, which we expected to reach by tomorrow morning, and so I think making landfall and having the end in sight boosted everyone's morale.
By lunchtime someone cracked open a bottle of wine and the atmosphere was very relaxed and dolphins were spotted riding our (slow) bow wave.
We also spotted our first ship since we set off and Berk was able to contact them on the radio and asked them to e-mail his wife so she could spread the word to other worried family members as were should have been back days ago (in the event, the message did reach Berk's wife but she didn't pass it on for some reason that escapes me).
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| Our first ship sighting |
Late that day we saw a passing Filipino fishing boat and hailed to them to ask if they had any fish for sale as John wasn't having any further success in catching anything. They had two tuna fish, which at first they wanted to trade for cigarettes but there were no smokers on board. In the end they settled for cash. Dinner that night was sashimi.
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| A passing fishing boat sells us dinner |
Jim and me were on the midnight to 3am shift. I had a dream that night I was on the Star Ferry in Hong Kong, even to the point when I woke up and it took a moment to realise I wasn't, which was a strange sensation because the dream was so real.
Progress for the day is as shown in green below:
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