WRITTEN BY SOFIA NOGUES
ON LEG FIVE, FROM ARUBA TO PANAMA

We set sail from Aruba with winds of around 15 knots and gusts of over 20 knots – perfect to get S.V.TravelEdge moving. As we left the island behind and we sailed into the sunset, Sophie invited me to steer at the helm and the feeling was absolutely great. Not only was the wind carrying us to San Blas at a 7 knot speed, suddenly we had a surprise visit – dolphins swimming and jumping around S.V. TravelEdge. They played at the bow of the boat, racing us and jumping around. Surely, this must mean good luck for our expedition. But there’s also two Mahi-Mahi tails hanging at the helm that are bringing us the best of winds for our journey – sailors supersticions. 

eXXpedition

 eXXpeditionPhoto credits: Sofía Nogués & eXXpedition

And that took us into day three. Mo, Sheri, Jo and I started it very early – we had the 00:00 to 04:00am shift. This meant that bang in the middle of the night, we had to keep an eye out on the sailing. That is with a cup of tea made by our marvelous crew on watch before us. We had a full moon but the sky was kind and it delighted us with a few shooting stars as we were at the helm. Can you ask for more in life than sailing the night away making wishes to shooting stars? We even enjoyed some good tunes and had some great chats. In no time, it was 04:00am.

 

We’ve been playing around a bit with the sails. The trade winds are making us go downwind and we set up the sails to go full on downwind – like we’d say in Spanish, in ‘donkey ears’ position. We’re sailing at 6-7 knots heading closer to the Colombian coast and into the San Blas islands. Anywhere you look, there’s no sight of land. And the feeling is absolutely great!

eXXpedition Photo credit: Sofía Nogués & eXXpedition

Sailing is a big part of our expedition but so is science and today we got to do some Niskin bottle sampling as well as some manta trawling. Having seen videos of the manta trawl deployment, I thought it was a simple process. Nothing close to that! It took a few of us to set it all up and get her overboard to start sampling. It was great fun! Oh, and the Niskin bottles take a bit of Harry Potter talent too… Either you know about Quidditch or you won’t get them to capture the samples. So, we did the science, got the samples and guess what? We saw microplastics… This far away from land and in apparently clear waters.

eXXpedition Photo credit: Sofía Nogués & eXXpedition

As we sailed the afternoon away, we got creative. Mo came up with a brilliant game: we had to draw each other without looking at the paper. It’s quite a challenge! And the results…well, they were fun and abstract!

Photo credit: Mo Langmuir & eXXpedition

Surprisingly we got most of our main traits where they were supposed to be – except for some eyelashes by the nose. And now back to sailing away before we have dinner watching the sunset.

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