[DAY 102] The guiding fish

A couple of days ago I reached a milestone of 1,000 nm swum. Now I am working toward a second milestone, 1,000 nm from the coast of Japan.

Today I jumped in the water thinking about this new milestone. I haven’t been swimming in a straight line and I have been following the Kuroshio, a current that meanders and makes big curves as it flows toward the east. For that reason, I have roughly about another 180 nm to swim before reaching the 1,000 nm marker away from the Japanese coasts.

Today, we still had strong wind, the waves were smaller, but I had to swim straight against them. During the second hour, I had a visitor, a strange looking fish about 25 centimeters long. He had two little fins on his back and two on his belly, they were pulsing to propel him, he was just using his tail to turn. The fish stayed with me for more than 5 hours, this was by far the longest time anything had ever stayed with me in the water.

Paul and Mark, on the dinghy, had difficulty handling the waves crashing against the bow, they constantly had to use the bailer to remove the water.

At the end of my seventh hour, Paul told me that they couldn’t keep up with the amount of water coming into the dinghy and they had to stop before flooding the batteries. So after removing all my equipment and rinsing me in the sea, I jumped in the RHIB to joined the rest of the crew on our mother ship.

Ben

Weather conditions:
Sunny (could coverage 4/8)
Wind speed: 15 kts
Wind direction: NE
Waves height: 2m
Waves direction: E
Water temperature: 27.9°C