Song of the Whale Diary: 5th - 7th June

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Friday 6th June
Written by Magnus
Having returned order to the engine room, we leave the harbour at around 5am to carry on towards the island of La Palma. We have several sightings throughout the day of bottlenose dolphins and turtles which is always good and helps to keep people interested. It appears however that the problem in the engine room is not entirely over. By mid afternoon a strong smell comes out of the engine room ventilation and seconds later the fire alarm goes off. The engine room is completely filled with black smoke and small flames are coming out of the hydraulic battery box. After extinguishing the fire and making some  emergency repairs  we decide to go to the closest port on La Palma (or la Isla Bonita as the Spanish crew members call it) a few hours away to review the situation and make good.  We arrive in port at around 2300 and some of us spend most of the night crawling around in the engine room cleaning and re-wiring. It appears that a failed charge regulator caused one of the batteries to be over-charged resulting in it catching fire. The boat's systems can still function without those particular batteries so we continue on our passage to the Azores.

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Saturday 7th June
Written by Nienke
After finishing the final checks, we leave the north-east part of La Palma, and head south. Unfortunately, we obtain an anchor line around our propeller, so when we reach the south-west side of the island (with calmer waters and more or less out of the wind), Magnus and Niklas take care of this. Sailing along the west side of the island, we see a beautiful caldera (crater wall), a group of about 25 very huge bottlenose dolphins, and even a mystery baleen whale! Some of the baleen whale species can be very hard to distinguish at sea, and it takes us a long while to decide the species of this individual; it seems very large, and also has a very large dorsal fin making us think it could be a fin whale, but seems too dark a colour and lacking the distinctive markings seen on the side of a fin whale head. We take plenty of pictures to aid us in the species decision later on, eventually coming to the conclusion that it was a Bryde’s whale. In the evening we leave the view of the island behind us, and head towards the sunset and the open ocean. No sighting of land in front of us for the next 500 miles (approx 800km)! The night watch is very peaceful with a calm sea, a new moon and a lot of twinkling stars shining upon us.

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