18:53N 22:10W It’s getting a little bit fishy

S/V Blue Argolis
Greg and Sue Hill
Tue 22 Nov 2022 10:56
Latitude 18 53’N ; longitude 23 10’ Tuesday 22nd November, day 7 at sea and ‘Alpha Whiskey’

Yesterday afternoon the edge fell off the wind, instead of screaming 30+ knots, it was more 22 to 24 knots, what a difference that makes to the sea state. Although we didn’t change our sail plan until 05.00 when we had 16 knots and we’re below 5 knots of boat speed. The skipper got me out of my bunk (can I have an ahhhh please!) to re-hoisted the main with 2 reefs…… now 10.00 we’re back up to 22 knots of apparent wind (what our anometer is reading) and 7 knots of boat speed….. as we are running dead down wind we combine these to get true wind strength …. herm!…. 29 knots of true wind??? However, it is forecast to ease and the boat is sailing well, seas are calming, sun is out and we have daylight until 19.00 to make any further decisions.

So we will keep calm and continue.

We are definitely getting into fish territory….. we hear the Chinese fishing boats calling each other on the radio, can’t see them on AIS though? Greg has had his fishing rod over the side during most daylight hours. He keeps promising me he will catch a tuna for supper. We had a near miss yesterday when the rod ‘went off’, we both jumped out of our skins! Sadly, by the time Greg wound the reel in the fish had got away, we’re sure it was a big one though! However, seas were still big, and we were a bit worried about how we’d land and prepare it on a heaving deck? We are also seeing loads of flying fish, flying low across the waves. Indeed we have so far had 3 suicidal flying fish jump onto the boat….. Greg says you can grill them, but I’m not so sure, might be better as bait? Needless to say, they were thrown back in….I think as we sail we will get more knowledgeable about fish and fishing.

Talking of sailing, we ran 142 nm yesterday, total so far 693nm run, with 157nm still to go…. Looking good for land fall tomorrow sometime :)

Greg and Sue xx


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