Another day of wonderful sailing. We are making good headway. A wind of around thirty knots in the right direction makes for beautiful sailing conditions. Waves are towering next to us as though they would like to eat us, but then they lift us up and gently put us down again. OK, this is accompanied by a fair bit of rolling, enough to make a lunch soup bowl decide to go and take a flying lesson but on the whole it is comfy.
This afternoon I spent (quite) some time cleaning my sailing coat to “Antarctica-biohazard-prevention-standard”. Vacuuming the pockets and any other recesses and scraping anything out of the Velcro with a paperclip. I am sure it has never been as clean as it is now.

Twice daily we spend half an hour on the poop deck for bird registration. We record the kind of birds seen and their numbers. This is to get an insight into bird migration and feeding habits and it is part of three programs of citizen science that Europa is engaged in. The other two are photo identification of whales and seals, and investigation with a Secchi- disk. But we will come to that later.

Photo by Ricky / Richard Simko - Chief Engineer Mkize cleaning his gear