NEAR DISASTER

After a strong North wind of 15 knots pushed us South some 45 miles, which is exactly where we don’t want to go, we deployed the parachute anchor. The sea is some 6kms deep here so the para anchor sinks to about 80m and holds @Mhondoro into the wind, pretty much stationary.

This, of course, entirely messes my head up! To know you are at the complete mercy of the elements and can make zero headway towards your goal is daunting and debilitating. A supreme lesson in patience and trust!

Yesterday was day three of this and the highlight of my day was to swim and feed Raymond the remora small pieces of salami (which he loves!). During the afternoon the retrieval line buoy, instead of being off the bow of the boat, was dead astern!

I immediately pulled the line in and realized something was wrong. The shackle, which I’d secured with a cable tie, had fallen off.

We had to laboriously pull in the inflated anchor in by hand! Once on board, I saw that the para anchor shackle cable tie had also disappeared and that the shackle pin was holding on by literally one thread!

Had she also gone it would be ‘game over’ as we would head directly south and miss Rio entirely! Our expedition would have been over!

I have now tied off all shackles so that Neptune himself can’t listen them!

The great news is, we upped anchor at 13.15 today and are heading West/North West, albeit very slowly with hard rowing, each stroke takes us a minuscule amount closer at 1.7knots.

We are anticipating Easterlies from tomorrow which will be more in our favour. Hold thumbs!