We needed a fishing themed movie for today’s blog because yes, we broke the duck, we caught a fish.  David reckons On Golden Pond is about fishing but in my books it’s about old people with dementia.  Hmmm given the senior moments he’s had lately (read Grumpy Old Men) I’m not going to argue with him – we’ll stick with On Golden Pond.  Today was always going to be the “day of the fish” – David had two lines out and was giving intense vibes out.  He was certainly not going to land at the Cape Verdes without a fish.  So....we’ve got delicious mahimahi for dinner.  All going well, we should be dropping the anchor around 6pm (Saturday) and first up is a big rum ( we don’t drink on passage so we’re hanging out for one) followed by mahimahi steaks then sleep.  A solid 10 hours should fix the deficit.  With the water temperature at 27degrees we’ll wake and jump over the side – bliss! Over to the skipper for sailing info.

 

We had a great run last night under main and spinnaker. It was a big decision to leave the kite up all night but the forecast was for the winds to lighten which they did a little and freshened again in the morning. The moon spilled a beautiful milky light all night so bright we could almost read by it, just magic sailing in such conditions.  The course we made with the spinnaker pushed a little to the left of our desired heading so we opted to drop the kite and gybe over this morning. This is normally a reasonably  simple procedure but always fraught with potential disaster. All went to plan until it was time to pull the snuffer down over the now released sail which was trying to wrap itself round the forestay but the snuffer jammed meaning we had to drop it on deck.  Fortunately this went OK  in the end (kind of...a few tense moments) and it is now stuffed into the front cabin where it can stay until anchor. Brenda hates the coloured sail!

 

On another note, I can’t believe how filthy Bandit is this morning, not only the decks but some of the halyards tied off on the mast have red dust on them. Then there are black soot like marks all over the deck. Where does this stuff come from?  I guess it is the Sahara spilling out into the Atlantic, it is only 360 NM away to the east. We always  try to keep Bandit clean and tidy and find it frustrating enough in port or even at anchor keeping the dirt off the boat but to get it at sea is a surprise as well as a pain.