Dance floor 15.39S 179.07W
Salsa af Stavsnas
Ellinor Ristoff Staffan Ehde
Wed 12 Nov 2014 17:55
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Left yesterday by 10.30, Ellinor and the kids came
back after checking out. I did the dishes, my checklist before departure
etc.
We came out at sea and it felt unreal, it was
smooth as a dance floor and after 2 hours of motoring we had the wind coming at
us
with 8-10 knots. We could just fall off 40 degrees
from the wind and sail on with 4-5 knots.
Dropped the lure and a couple of hours later I saw
a huge fin in the front of the boat. I thought it was a dolphin and since we do
not want to
catch any I runned back and started to roll in the
line on the rod, then suddenly PANG! It was as if we had caught an whole island,
the force was incredible and up in the air came a sailfish! It was HUGE!
Everybody was up to see it as I had yelled "Dolphins!".
This sailfish did not like to have a hook and
started to fly in the air more than being in the water, the children yelling in
astonishment.
As my brain was saying "how the h-l are you going
to deal with THAT?" the fish made the descition for us, it snaped the line like
nothing and disappeared. At the moment our fishing it turning expensive, we
loose a lot of lures...
Now it is thursday morning and we are still on a
smoooooth seafloor, but since a couple of hours the wind is not strong enough to
keep our
pace so we are motorsailing.
There are two reasons we need to keep moving,
behind us is a thunderstorm that we want to keep away from and in front of us we
have the Fiji customs who will charge us a vast amount of money if they have to
work overtime during the weekend. So we want to be in Savusavu by Friday lunch.
We will see if we make it.
By 10.30 we will enter the Vetauua Channel, wich is
in fact an opening between a corridor of reefs.That corridor stretches about 30
nM south.
In Savusavu we will have something called a cyclone
mooring, this means we can go there and seek protection as soon as there is a
warning.
A cyclone mooring is made of three long stainless
steel rods that are drilled and screwed into the bottom, the job is made by
divers of course.
Three lines go to a swivel and from the swivel you
get two lines that go to your boat. The idea is that the boat can rotate on the
swivel.
We will be far into Savusavu bay, and the idea is
to have us ashore and the boat has to ride the cyclone on her own.
Hopefully we have not to go through this but the
mooring is really a tested solution that has worked well in most severe
conditions.
It is amazing, the sun has come up while I have
been writing and it is already 27 degrees C, probably the kids will demand us to
stop the boat and have a morning swim, we will see.
Today I'm going to try to make an interview with
each of them and post it tomorrow.
Hope you are going to have a great day!
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