Whale sighting and more

With my iPad now used as our main navigation for days of non stop sailing, I'd written a couple of blog posts on my iPhone but could not log-in an additional device onto the hotel wifi I bought access for.  Much of it was old news anyway and some content ended up not even being the way things turned out...so I deleted them.

Highlights were seeing a whale on one of the days trying to sail to Ile a Vache during very calm to no winds.  It was slender and black or very dark with a very small dorsal fin reminding me of the Mink Whale I saw kayaking the B.C. & SE Alaska inside passage in 2010.  So that's my guess as to what kind it was but I don't know if they get down in the Caribbean or not?  It was less than 100 feet from Asperida the first time it surfaced.  I'm guessing 30 feet in length but it's hard so say as only a portion is ever above the surface.

Another thing worth mentioning was our day of deciding to head north.  It was getting to where we felt by the time we did manage to reach Ile a Vache, Candace's group would be back in the USA?  One final effort involved an iridium satellite phone call to Rob in Les Cayes to try and give our location just 16 miles north of some town I forget the name of on the north side of the southern peninsula.  The idea was to see if they could hire someone in that town to come bring us a substantial amount of engine oil so we could motor to Ile a Vache in the absence of wind or the expected headwinds once we were around the point? This attempt at communication was not successful.  As we sat wondering what to do and discussing heading north to Great Inagua Island for more oil and to continue on to the USA, we noticed a small Haitian fishing boat sailing in the light offshore breeze wing on wind right toward us... The light breeze was useless for moving Asperida but the small boat was closing fast.  Considering we were floundering around in a very small area within view of land for over 2 days we were concerned they might be coming out to exploit the seemingly disabled sailboat.. So we used a bit of our limited oil and fired up the engines...heading north to put some distance between us.  Later a slight SW wind allowed us to slowly sail toward a very large Caribbean island.. although the Bahamas was our planned destination.  As you know from the last post it didn't work out that way.