Common Dolphins riding the Bow

Hi Everyone.
Writing this from Belfast after a 55 hour sail from Cardiff.  We had a bit of an adventure leaving Cardiff; no sooner out of the barrage lock and the engine over heating alarm was going off.  Took 6 hours for Captain Diane (sing to Captain Birdseye) and her first mate 24 year old Holly (little Miss Sunshine) to discover, first, a piece of plastic in the water cooling inlet pipe - ha Plastic - but then an eel totally wedged into the pipe.  This was a bit of a spooky moment as we'd been told a story the previous evening (story telling event) about an eel - we should have known.

Anyway we finally got off.  The sail was easier than round Lands' End because the wind was behind us however, it was still pretty rocking and rolling.  We did manage to do a trawl, but even that was difficult because we can't trawl within 20 minutes of seeing sea mammals, and we had a pod of common dolphins riding our bow wave on and off for hours - absolutely beautiful.  We also saw two seals, and loads of gannets and fulmars.  Some of us were a bit queasy but not debilitated like before.  I love taking the helm and hauling up the main sail, and just sitting watching the horizon and the waves.  I've not had a night shift yet when I've seen the stars although had a couple of lovely sunsets and a sunrise.  My night shifts have been rainy - lots of chat, tea and snacks with my watch team to while away the hours.

Daytime, we are split into pairs and have specific jobs to do on a rota system: cooking and clearing up (breakfast, lunch and dinner), the heads (toilets), navigation (involves hourly posts in ships log),  bilges (checking and pumping out) and engineer (checking mechanical stuff).  Then there's science to do, two different trawls (for macro and micro plastics), an air filter system, water stats, water filtration, sediment samples, spotting marine litter (tracking on GPS), spotting wildlife (tracking on GPS) and collecting mussels.

Tomorrow morning we leave for Arran, which should only take the day.  On Arran 8 of the team will be leaving and we will be joined by 8 more.