Day 9 – Aerial visitors

The crews have already received welcome visitors from whales and dolphins from beneath the waves. Now they are starting to receive visitors from the air in the form of birds and insects. Despite having rowed for more than a week and even through they have rowed more than 300nm they are less than 250nm off the African coastline. At present they are enjoying a building easterly wind which has come from the Sahara desert and picked up a few visitors on the way including 3 moths and a cockroach which have been found by Ocean’s Elite onboard their boat Isabel. They’ve also seen several seabirds overnight who flew up to the boat, perhaps confused by the navigation lights.

With this following wind, even through it’s due to be pretty strong, the crews will be welcoming this news as it makes the effort of rowing just a little bit easier. By now it’s clear that the crews are getting a little more settled, a little more organised and starting to make some excellent progress. The crews have followed the old advice which is “go south until the butter melts and then turn west”. Well they’ve been going south(ish) for a while now and although they’re not quite as far south as we’d expect to see truly reliable trade winds helping them out, they’re certainly in a good place. Long may it continue.