You’ve heard of the Newfoundland tradition of “Kissing the Cod”? Well, passage shenanigans aboard Kinship had Lisa “Kissing the Fictitious Flying Fish” instead!

As experienced Caribbean sailors, Paul and Lisa informed us that we were bound to see lots of flying fish on our passage. Paul reportedly saw the first flying fish, entering the sighting in our log book on Day 4. Then he and Lisa continued to spot lots more of them, where Matthew and I could not spot a single one. We would sit staring at the sea for hours on our watches without ever seeing a single fish. We started accusing the Landry’s of hallucinating (ask Lisa about the jellyfish in the toilet bowl sometime :-), and referring to the beasts as the “Fictitious Flying Fish”.

We had to eat our words (but not the fish) when Lisa picked one up off our deck the next morning! Her reputation was saved, and she was grateful – but despite the kiss, poor Mr. Fictitious Flying Fish did not come back to life, turn into a handsome prince, or grant her three wishes. 

On day 7 of our passage to the BVI’s we had a very special visitor, a minke whale! It was a bright sunny day, with winds from behind, both sails up, reasonable waves, and it just happened we were all sitting in the cockpit together (which doesn’t happen that all that often on passages), when I spotted something dark in the water…then it came up and spouted! It could only be a whale!

We all jumped out of our seats in excitement, quickly buckled on our safety harnesses, and watched as a very friendly minke whale proceeded to check us out. He clearly was curious about what he was seeing, as he came alongside and rolled onto his side to take a good look at us. Then he rolled right over and showed us his bright white belly. Was so close I could have tickled his tummy with a boat hook! He was about half our boat’s length, so about 20 feet long, plus or minus a few feet. He played around, diving under the boat and coming up on the other side repeatedly, passing right under Matthew and Paul’s feet as they stood on the bowsprit. He hung around for a good 15 minutes and gave us the show of a lifetime – it was so amazing, the photos don’t do it justice, but here they are anyway. It was definitely the highlight of the passage!

Here is a bit of info on the minke whale (from Wikipedia) 

The minke whale is a black/gray/purple color. Common minke whales (Northern Hemisphere variety) are distinguished from other whales by a white band on each flipper. The body is usually black or dark-gray above and white underneath. Minke whales have between 240 and 360 baleen plates on each side of their mouths. Most of the length of the back, including dorsal fin and blowholes, appears at once when the whale surfaces to breathe.

Minke whales typically live for 30–50 years; in some cases they may live for up to 60 years.

The brains of minke whales have around 12.8 billion neocortical neurons and 98.2 billion neocortical glia.^[11]

The whale breathes three to five times at short intervals before ‘deep-diving’ for two to 20 minutes. Deep dives are preceded by a pronounced arching of the back. The maximum swimming speed of minkes has been estimated at 38 km/h (24 mph).

Among the many courses taken in preparation for our journey, I had completed a radio communication course, where I learned about marine radio protocol and brushed up on the phonetic alphabet. It sure came in handy on the passage, and brought back memories of my Dad working the net in his Ham radio shack at home – CQ CQ CQ, this is Victor Echo Three Echo Bravo India. Miss you Dad – you’d be proud of me now, carrying on the tradition!

The Caribbean 1500 Rally has a twice daily radio net. It was a great way to stay connected with the other boats, to feel you weren’t “alone out there”. It even proved that old-school is cool when our satellite email system didn’t come through with the weather on the first day. We soon had that working, but continued following the net for the routing information, to hear how the other boats were faring, and for the chat, which included “fish stories” and the “motto of the day”, my favourite being “Cruising on a sailboat is the most expensive way to travel 3rd class”.