18 27.7N 039 10.46W At Sea Day 13

Pipedream
Mon 6 Feb 2012 13:08
Fish on! Yesterday we were all sleeply minding our own business when one of the rods started to announce it's line was being stolen by a fish. As John scrambled to bring in the big one the second rod's drag began to sing. I grabbed that one and was just able to stop the line from stripping out... well almost. In about 15 minutes John had fought his fish to the side of the boat. I was having less luck was able to hand the rod off to Matt. I manned the gaff and brought John's 25 pound Mahi up on deck where we all stepped on the brute and tied a lasso around his tail to slow him down. Fifteen minutes later Matt was still hard at it. John took over from Matt and was unable to make any headway. We finally took in the head sail and turned turned the boat around to head toward the fish. We finally got him in and released him after realizing we had about 50 pounds of fish on deck at that point.

John did his fish cleaning thing and carved off an amazing amount of fresh meat. About an hour after most of it was in the fridge, and the carnage on deck was cleaned up, we were eating sushi complete with wasabi. That evening for dinner we had fresh salg pickled in lemon juice for dinner. Guess what's for dinner tonight?

Last night was a commodity of errors. First we went to reef the main for the night. We got it down fine but when we tried to tension it again one of the cars... likely the one we fixed jammed and we could not get it tentioned properly. Not to self think twice before getting another fully battonted main. The the wind started to pick up to like 25 from 15. I went to roll up the Genoa. It would not come all the way in. While the waves were likely only about 8 to 10 feet they we boare very rough. No one slept and much the boat got beat up pretty bad. The boats internal 120 v is shorting out now. This morning the wind dropped and we were able to fix the Genoa and secure the main. Are we having fun yet?

It looks like we have just crossed the half way (distance) mark with 1431 KM to go to the Virgin Islands. I am hoping we get out of their in only a few days with all the repairs we will have to do. all is well.