Tuna!

Great excitment yesterday around 6:30pm: we caught a big tuna! Was about Clea's height and weight!Greg had to decide how to cut it - sure the right technic will come with training. It is now all cut in steaks and most of them are in the freezers. We are thinking of the various receipes we can try for the next few days. Tonight, it will be marinated in lemon and olive oil + herbs, then we were thinking of tuna lasagnas.

The sea is deeply blue. The sky today is of the same colour and it is warm. The winds are light (around 10 knt)and we are doing 5 knt. There is quite a swell but life is good on board.

Our position is 11deg 01S and 11deg 23 W

We are hoping to reach Ascension and see some turtles on Sunday evening (300nm to do). There is another yacht 40nm behind us. They left Hout Bay 1 day after us and we saw them (3 French guys) again in St Helena. The boys are calling them every morning with the SSB and telling them what's going on board Merlin.

Our routine is simple. The kids are doing some school work every morning for few hours, then they play endlessly with their Legos or we all play Uno together or watch a DVD.

Our night watches start at 22:30 and are for 2h1/2 per person. So it is just the time for Greg to watch another movie or for me to bake some bread.

We crossed a 500ft ship last night (details from our AIS) and had to change our course as it was a collision course. Our system is really good to detect other ships: 1st there is the Sea Me which detects the radar (about 1h1/2 before seeing it) of the other vessel, then the AIS which shows us where the vessel can be and our radar will pick it up and finally we can see its lights when it is really close.

The main problem is the gybes as we are sailing downwind and the wind does change direction from time to time (and our wind instrument refuses to work since 10 days).