24:50S 177:11E

10^th June 2013 – Frying Tonight

This morning, a little after dawn, Jon checked the fishing line he’d left out all night – a bit idle we’ll confess – to discover that something had had a go at it – not sure what – and come off a bit worse for wear.  The bits of fish were got rid of and the lure tossed overboard again.  A few minutes later the reel screamed and by around 0745 we had a very conveniently-sized 2 feet long female mahi mahi aboard.  Mahi mahi are excellent eating.  Within half an hour that had been transformed into two very decent -sized fillets (many thanks to the Marsters family of Palmerston Island for the free lessons on this!)  One will do us for tonight; the other has disappeared into the freezer.

So, that’s fishing done for a bit.  That being the case, Percy the Parasailor was dug out of his stowage and hoisted in the southerly Force 4 breeze.  Whilst we have so far avoided disturbing Mr Perkins, progress is now a bit slower than we would like at times given that the wind is now almost exactly astern.  So, we won’t rule out the possibility.

It’s now just 1600 hrs local on Monday and we have sailed rather more than 650 of the 1,100 NM we need to cover to Fiji.  Even with Arnamentia’s crew’s dodgy maths that seems to leave us around 450 NM to do.  That still looks like a Thursday arrival in Savusavu but we don’t need to drop anything below a 6 knot average to manage that in daylight.      

Ergo, Mr Perkins, we may yet need your services.