Rocket launches and Swimming in 10000ft of water

It has been pretty quiet the last few days. The winds have been fairly constant blowing us to the west, and if there are any whales in the area they are poking their heads up behind us when we are not looking. We did seen a decent sized shark circle the boat, and we think it may have bit off our fishing lure. But we did catch another Mahi Mahi, a really big one. We have fish for several dinners for four. And this morning I caught another, but it got away just as it came close to the boat. Today we went swimming. We had to stop anyways to fix the batten again – my McGuyver’in needed a tune-up, as the batten started working its way out. So after dealing with that, all sails furled and just let the boat drift on bare poles, then into the water. Tried to touch bottom, but, you know… 10000ft of water. And nothing came up to say hello – dammit. And the bottom of the boat is getting a bit of a beard. In St Lucia we will have to give her a shave. Jason wanted to get some underwater footage of him diving in, so I held his gopro camera for him, then he held it for me, except that he dropped the camera! Lost it in the middle of the Atlantic! And a few minutes after we got back on board and under way again, a whale showed a fin very briefly just beside the boat (about 50ft away). We never saw any more than just that glimpse though. Maggie has made potato salad, pasta salad, and rice pudding today. We do tend to eat very well here on Adiona. Oh, and i saw a rocket launch on the early morning shift, about an hour before dawn. French Guyana is just south and west of us, and the European Space Agency launches their Ariane rockets from there. I saw a string of about 30 lights (like satellites) go overhead. I figure it was a cluster of satellites being released from the booster. As we don’t have internet access now, maybe someone reading this could look up launches today (Feb 5) and leave a note in the comments if there was a launch out of French Guyana early this morning. Right now we are 5 to 6 days away from St Lucia. The transatlantic passage is in the home stretch now. It feels kind of weird having talked about doing this for so long, to be actually doing it now.