I’m not entirely sure how, but I’m convinced that the ocean and its inhabitants must be reading this blog. A while ago, I made a comment about flying fish being minuscule little things. Today, they sent out the troops to prove me wrong!

I must admit that the ocean never ceases to confuse me. Looking at the wind and the waves, it appears to be getting less helpful. Indeed, when I’m not rowing, I’m moving slower than I was a few days ago. But when I actually get behind the oars, it’s all moving along quite nicely. In fact, it turns out that when the ocean is providing less help, I can actually row faster!

Sadly, that hasn’t prevented today being another fairly disappointing day for progress. I say that, but it’s a sign of how things have changed from three weeks ago that I now consider 40 miles to be a bad day; back then it would have been worthy of celebration! It appears I’m now in a bit of a depression - the weather, that is, not my state of mind; I’m quite jolly as it happens! - so the next few days could be quite hard work. But hard work feels that little bit easier when you’re bearing down on the finish line.

I’m beginning to realise that, in order to be an ocean rower, you either have to have a great tolerance of minor knocks, or you have to acquire one pretty quickly. Every moment, you need as many points of contact to stop yourself being thrown into a wall. That means that your head is often used when your hands are full. If you make the mistake of lifting your weight to move something underneath you, you find that you stay nicely still, but the boat appears to move about three yards to one side.

I was always looking forward to having an excuse to try and get a nice tan. I needn’t have worried, because I’m covered in so many cuts, scrapes and bruises that you can barely see a bit of healthy skin. It’s got to the point where I just don’t notice it anymore. Last night, I was having a quick snack, when I noticed my elbow was a bit crusty. Presuming I’d put it in some left-over food or something (as you do!), I tried to rub it off, only to discover a nice supply of blood oozing out of an inch-long gash in my arm. Quite how it happened, I have no idea, but I caught it in time - it didn’t make a mess of my bed!

As for the flying fish, based on the number of them that I remove from the boat each day, it’s only a matter of time that one smacks me in the face. Well, I’m very glad it wasn’t this one! It wasn’t far short of a foot long. I put the loo roll in the picture for a bit of scale, and the other little blob is a more conventional sized flying fish. Never again will I make jokes about their lesser stature!

I shall depart with a question that I’ve been wondering about: what’s the longest recorded flight by a flying fish? If anyone knows off the top of their head, you deserve a medal!