At Sea - On route to St Helena Island

Hi Everyone, 

Hope you are well. Things are going well here, although John is still seasick and Dimitri was seasick yesterday and, once again, I am not getting much sleep. There is a big swell out here so we are being knocked about quite a bit.

The bit of exciting news from yesterday is our close encounter with whales. As we passed by the mouth of Saldanha Bay, we saw many sea lions and a few whales blowing in the distance. All of a sudden a whale surfaced right next to us, then another which was probably a baby. They played around, right near us for awhile, then one surfaced, facing the side of the boat and about 5m (15-20ft) away. It looked at us and then dived directly under the boat. It stayed under the boat for quite a while (we know this as our depth sounder went to 11m from 50m) and then eventually surfaced on the other side of us. It was quite eerie knowing it was under us for so long. 
We have now done 250nm but as we are mostly sailing (and not going in the direction we want), we are only 160nm from Cape Town towards St. Helena.

We have issues with our internet and Dimitri has spent many hours trying to get it fixed. Finally after a prolonged satellite phone call ($$$), it is working after a fashion but we cannot get into our usual e-mail account(Gmail decided it doesn't recognize our computer)Still, at least we can download weather using it. We may have to start a new account when on WiFi later! Luckily we now have our HF radio sailmail account which I am now using so we can still be in contact.

Keep well and smiling
Arti and Dimitri.