Celebrations aboard! Happy Birthday to Paul and Carol Hodder!

Mollihawk's Atlantic Circumnavigation
eddie/david nicholson
Sat 6 Dec 2008 16:37
 
Yes, you might think that we are slowly going mad out here, slipping off the edge  and all the rest, well maybe so!
But we thought that we'd celebrate Paul and Carol's Birthday in style ... Atlantic Style!
With a cake and a candle and balloons we sang happy birthday to them both for our 11'ssss.
 
With that the fishing rod behind us started whizzzzing. The last few days we have lost couple of fish as we have tried to wind them in cos we are moving too fast.So for this time we had a cunning plan. We stuck the boat hard into the wind took down the spinaker in no time with the aid of the snuffer and hauled in a massive 8kg Wahoo-Peto ! 
 It looks more like something that would eat YOU than you would eat!       
Google this it looks more like a Barracuda.
We caught him on a lure given to us by a very friendly Moroccan Fisherman called Mohammad I feel the urge to call him and thank him if we only had his mobile!
With the aid of a gaff and much Kodak clicking we landed the monster.The real problem arose after we had sedated him(vodka style and this really works!) when we went to filet him.We had no knife strong enough to cut through him and resorted to taking out the hack saw to get through the back bone!
We intend to eat this fellow for lunch and dinner!
The bizarre thing about our fishing is that we throw out the line when we slow down due to a drop in the wind speed and as soon as we do the wind picks up for us so we tend to keep it out as it appears to keep the wind GOD's happy!
 
We had an amazing performance supplied to us by a school of Dolphins who appeared to be chasing their lunch and in the process were jumping high out of the water in groups of up to 10 at a time even 'flipper' was never known to put on a show as dramatic as that!
 
The heat out hear is much like home I'm sure 30.6 degrees C in the shade!!
We are all fighting for the shady places and no one fancies a dip in the ocean now that we see what was following us under the water!
Our forecasters are telling us that if we head North West we should hit the decent breezes that we need to take us to our final destination so we are altering course Northwards.There are we figure only 40 boats out of the 220 down as low as we are and it seems well North of us there is little or no wind so we are hoping to make it to the fair winds before the main pack.
 
Mollihawk's Shadow Out.
 

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