EWAN

After several nights of being awoken by the dreaded bleating of the alarm clock, only three hours after having gone to bed, it had certainly not become any easier as of yet.

I’ve deliberately chosen a different alarm from my normal one, to avoid the likely PTSD from the sound of the thing in the future. What has had a marked improvement however, is how awake I have felt about 10 minutes after mustering up every ounce of will power to drag myself out of the cabin and get back out onto the oars again.

I swung open the hatch at 0555 hours, expecting to be greeted by the usual scene: a slightly relieved grimace from Lachlan, as he concludes his final strokes of the night shift. Instead, however, this morning Lachlan was in uncontrollable fits of laughter, gasping for air and

doubled over on the rolling seat. What had caused all of the commotion was a somewhat alarmed voice having called out from the cabin opposite me, moments before.

“Lala, Lala! All the electrics have gone off!”

Perhaps an unreasonable response, you might think. For without the electrics, how would we navigate, make water, communicate back to land… or share the next update of The Ship’s Log? Slightly more understandable when you learn than the bow cabin, from which Jamie had called, is essentially devoid of any electronic equipment - other than a light, which I could see was already switched on.

The chartplotter, radio, illuminated fuse-board (and all the rest

are to be found in the stern cabin, which I was currently occupying).

Sympathising with poor Jamie, he was sent back to his bunk for an extra 45 minutes of sleep. A standard procedure if one of us is ever in need of it, usually following broken nights or tougher days. Looking out for one another is of such importance.

A large number of dolphins were sighted at 0700 hrs, hunting about 200 meters off our bow. Perhaps 50 or more, we guessed. Then tuna a few hours later, leaping out of the water in search of some unknown prey. The 360 camera was plunged into the water to try and this, although not very successfully, however we did discover a remarkable amount of growth having formed on the underside of the hull, despite such a short amount of time at sea.

I had read about using a bird net to create a kind of flossing device to ‘keel haul’ the underside of the boat to remove the molluscs and biofilm that form, which can reduce speed through the water. I fished out the net and a few other things from the stern locker. Seems to have done the trick, despite the skepticism from the other two.

Additional note: Flying fish flew directly into my ear during the night. It might have been trying to tell me something, although I cannot be sure.