Another good day and another decent days run in mostly F4 winds. We set our clocks back another hour on-board today so our days run is calculated on a 25 hour day again but we have covered another 130nm in that time which we are very pleased with.

We have sailed with full whites today; the Mainsail continues to be boomed out to port and the Headsail poled out to starboard. We haven't needed to launch the Spinnaker as we have seen rarely less than 12kts and occasionally 15kts or 16kts so we have been making a steady 5kts give or take half a knot all day.

Conditions got a little bumpy this afternoon as we appeared to have a bit of cross-swell on our beam but that seems to have settled down now and it's generally been very comfortable.

Today we set our course west so we are now pointing directly towards Martinique which is rather exciting. Jamie has been reading the Pilot book for the Windward Islands and relaying to me information on Le Marin where we will check-in if all goes to plan. It sounds pretty cool.

We had another close encounter with a fish supper this afternoon but sadly it was not to be. Jamie had set his trolling reel and also the fishing rod he has in a rod holder at the back of the boat so we had two lines out. Of course as luck would have it both went at once and as he reeled them in I ran around assembling all of the "landing fish stuff" (technical angling term). The rod had a medium sized fish of unknown origins; Jamie made a call to leave him momentarily and reel in the trolling line which seemed to have something bigger on. He was right.. we had caught a large Mahi Mahi; it was beautiful, maybe 8 kilos, and it was going to take some landing. Jamie left him on the line in the water to tire himself out a bit while he gently released the other fish. Unfortunately the Mahi Mahi was too clever for us and managed to get himself free and not only detach himself but also the fishing lure which Jamie later realised he had not rigged quite correctly. That really was the one that got away!! At least he got clean away and although we lost the lure which we are pretty disappointed about it wasn't still attached to the fish so he isn't swimming around with fishing tackle hanging out of his mouth.

We have put the line back out (just the trolling line) with a new lure on but it might be penang curry for dinner again tonight.

As we prepared to go online and post tonight's blog we had a little further "excitement" as we noticed the lines to our headsail had chaffed where they pass through the spinnaker pole. This required Captain's immediate attention and we set about furling the headsail then cutting the lines and reattaching them. Finally Jamie lashed a section of fire hose to the spinnaker pole to stop the chaffing. It was a bit of an energetic hour while we sorted all of that out. As we finished the sun had just set over the horizon and Jamie had a quick scan around the deck to check all was in order and what did he find lying on our foredeck but a solitary flying fish which had stranded itself there at some point this afternoon. It felt like a rather feeble consolation prize!

Definately time to get the kettle on again ;)