Fish on the way to and from Long Island

AJAYA'S CRUISE
Phil & Nikki Hoskins
Mon 14 Feb 2011 16:33
From Conception we sailed back to Cape Santa Maria at the north western tip of Long Island and then another 20 miles down to Thompson Bay to see what the provisioning situation was like. Thompson Bay is becoming increasingly popular with cruisers especially as Georgetown becomes more crowded.
 
Fortune smiled on our fishing exploits as 2 Tuna struck our lures just coming onto the banks off Calabash Bay so we had a slight surplus of fish to give away on our arrival in Thompson Bay. Always nice to do and we knew exactly who would benefit.
 
    
 
We spent a few days anchored off Long Island Breeze which held a Superbowl party night for which boats anchored the length of Long Island arrived to see. There were some nice tasty hors'derves of meatballs  and chicken wings (for Skip only), Conch fritters which we washed down with rum punch and beers. We headed back to Ajaya before the game started as these events take the best part of the evening and when you can't understand the rules it becomes tedious to watch. We could hear the cheers from our position offshore all the way through til 11pm and then the dogs started barking all over the place which didn't help the Skipper's beauty sleep.
 
From Thompson Bay we sailed back to Georgetown in the hope that our engine part may have arrived. Of the two routes back one leads across the banks, is more direct by about 5 miles for which we already had a track laid down for, however we were looking for more fish and the second route would take us up to the drop-off zone where the pelagic fish tend to hang out and then keep at that depth southwestward to Georgetown.
 
This proved a good decision as we sailed much of the time once off the banks and bingo, another Tuna was bagged giving us another 4 more meals, one of which was shared with friends in Georgetown. Life isn't all bad!