23 Nov - Day 7 Position at 15.11 hrs 22:34.4N 022:28.6W

Imagine Of Falmouth Online Log
Jon Constantine
Fri 23 Nov 2007 17:17
Day 7 Distance to Antigua 2242 nm (nautical miles).

It's Friday so it must be fish day and sure enough if one arrives, there's always another behind it - just like buses.

Well I had left the hand line out all night as I have been doing since we started (we bring the rod in you may remember), and first thing this morning I noticed the hand line lure bouncing over the waves. I thought it was another plastic bad so I started to pull it in and realised it was a fish. Trouble was we were doing nearly 7 kts and couldn't slow down.  Poor thing got away with a very sore jaw having been dragged about a mile or more.  Anyway, that inspired us so we put out the rod job.  BINGO! Half an hour later we caught our first fish - a small tuna - about a kilo I guess.  Look at the pic and you can guess as well - you'll probably say half a kilo.

After Sam had landed it (yes, I know, it was my turn but she insisted I drive the boat and turn up into the wind to slow down). Ah well, she let me hold the net and land it for her.

"Your turn next" she said kindly.  So, Phil and I put the line out and waited patiently. BINGO AGAIN!  This time it was a bigger fish and very pretty - all sort of yellow and definately not a tuna.  Anyone any ideas? Sam said it was a Dorada but I thought they had heads like the white cliffs of Dover.  Anyway, tonights "menu del dia" is fresh fish of the day. I'll tell you how it "pans" out tomorrow.

Wind has really piped up now and is directly behind us.  Completely different motion to the boat now.  Not slamming and banging but rolling from side to side as the rollers come up behind us and lift the stern and the boat then surfs along but at the same time tries to veer off course to one side or the other. Making my typing really tricky.  For those of you who have not sailed its hard to describe the feeling.  Your whole world (all 37 feet of it) is continuosly moving about and you tend to stagger about like a drunk grabbing at things to hold on to. I'll try and take a picture tomorrow, but like fish, waves always look smaller in a photo.

While I have been writing this, Sam has cleaned (I was going to say gutted but cleaned sounds much nicer) both the fish.  At least she's not sqeamish.

That's it for today folks - there's a rain squall coming - time to reef.

Jon and Sam

Sam's fish

Sam's tuna.

Jon's fish

And this is?