Today has been a really productive day for me. Finally the conditions have lightened meaning I'm not getting thrown around constantly. Big winds and waves can be good for progress but they make it pretty tough going so it's nice to have it a little easier for a while. I took advantage of the light conditions to clean the bottom of the boat. However when I jumped in it was much cleaner than I thought so that was good. What wasn't good was being bitten by a little fish on my chest. Bloody thing! It was no problem as there only small and there are loads of them around most of the time but this little chap got a bit carried away. Maybe it was payback for trying to catch them earlier in the week. I also managed to take a wash today which was absolutely bliss!

I've had a forecast through and it shows the weather to be picking up over the next 7 days so that could be good. This evening at around 10.30 I noticed a ship coming straight towards me. I managed to get them on the radio and ended up having a great conversation. The name of the vessel was SKS SINNI this was no ordinary ship that you usually see. It was a 300 meter long super tanker heading for South Africa. It had come from Houston USA. It averages 350 miles every 24 hours and carries the equivalent of 10 million barrels of oil. I just thought it was quite amazing that little old me in my 23ft long ocean rowing boat was chatting away to the captain as it roared by. He was a friendly chap and diverted his course straight away when I told him what I was in and what I was doing.

I need to say a massive thanks to Speedo this time for topping up the minutes on my sat phone. This is a crucial bit of communications equipment. Without it there would be no blog. Thanks guys!

I'm off to bed now.

Captain Ketch out for another night!