Sam Davies’ daily log - A flying visit from Maverick and Goose
“Hello from the Atlantic!
Today has been a day of entertainment on board Roxy. First of all, since Cape Horn, islands keep springing up right in our path! The closest one was a tiny little island 30 miles south of the Falklands called Beauchene Island. We actually had to swerve to avoid it, and I passed about a mile and a half to leeward. It was a bird-heaven; Roxy was surrounded by all kinds of sea birds, and passing to leeward of the island proved a mistake as it smells of bird poo!
I even had a duck (or what looked like a duck!) flying round Roxy. It was so funny because it was trying to do what the albatrosses do and play in the updraft of Roxy’s sails. However, as we all know, the duck doesn't glide so she had to keep flapping her wings: she nearly ended up crash landing on the foredeck! I guess my little toy duck, Lucky, would have been happy to find a real friend on board.
Passing the Falklands has been tiresome. The wind has been ranging from 7 to 30 knots up and down all day, so endless sail changes and trimming have been essential. Also, there are huge lumps of kelp that seem to target my keel and daggerboards, so I have had to back down a few times to remove the unwelcome hitch-hikers. This unexpectedly led to a great piece of entertainment too.
I was down below and heard a really scary noise - like the daggerboard was breaking - so I shot up on deck to see what it was. I couldn’t believe my eyes as there, zooming past my head, was a fighter jet! Yes - Maverick and Goose came to see me! The jet did a couple of circles around Roxy at a really low altitude, to say hello. They must have seen me in the cockpit so they then sped off in front of Roxy and gave me an aerial display comprising a vertical climb terminating in a barrel roll, right in front of us - wow!
As you can imagine, the little girl in her pink boat stood there wide-eyed, with a HUGE smile on her face, totally bewitched by these Top Gun heroes who had just made her day!
S x”
At 1100 UK time, Sam Davies aboard Roxy was in 4th position, 1,669 miles from race leader Michel Desjoyeaux aboard Foncia
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