Fish!

27 May 08 19:10UTC 24'57N 064'37W

We had a quiet night and I was on watch 4-6am. It got light at five so I set out the fishing lines again and read some more of my book before handing over at six to Dave. Doug had woken up and went on deck too. I was below for five minutes and had just fallen asleep when Dave comes to tell me 'fish on!' and I come up to see Doug landing a little five pound mahi-mahi, so its fish for dinner tonight. Fortunate really as I realise the menu for tonight is a chicken dish for which I'd forgotten to buy the chicken.

Dave makes a round of excellent french toast for breakfast, served with some of the maple syrup Ken brought down from Canada. We get on with the day, with a fair wind and reasonable speed and the noon position gives us a respectable 135 miles for the day. Almost halfway now.

This afternoon has seen the weather go all over the place on us. Generally, the wind has been shifting into the south and going lighter but a set of squalls have brought rain and changes to the wind as they pass. Ahead of the squall, the wind accelerates from astern and we can end up riding it nicely for twenty minutes or so before the rain arrives. As the squall progresses over us, the wind shifts and eases back towards whatever was prevailing before it arrived but on the trailing edge, the cold air falling with the rain runs counter to the established breeze. In light winds, like today, the eight knot southerly has been overwhelmed by fifteen or so knots of south moving air from the squall and we suddenly has a sharp northerly wind to head into. The seas, having built a comfortable southerly swell, get pushed up and back by the new wind and we have a lumpy uncomfortable chop on top of the swell.

But squalls are temporary and we should see things settle out between them. Right now we are motoring because of the light or contrary wind, and it has just rained harder than I have seen it rain for a long time. The motion is lumpy and the sky is dark. It seems like we have crossed a dividing line that says out of the Caribbean, into the Atlantic.

We caught a second mahi-mahi, we saw it coming for the lure, jumping high on the wave tops and flashing blue and yellow before grabbing the lure firmly and ending up in our fridge. It's another small one, probably just four pounds this time and that makes up enough protein for dinner tonight and lunch tomorrow so we'll stop fishing for now.

Time to get this mail out to the blog and think about dinner. All's well. N.

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