The romance of the high seas

So my Valentines Day gift to Gesa is the delights of another overnight sailing trip, never say I'm not the romantic - this is an exclusive starlit sailing cruise to a beautiful Bahamian island town, people pay good money for this experience.

The good news is that it is a beautiful starlit night, gentle breeze and a calm sea. We are slipping along gently and making good progress towards Clarence Town, on Long Island. This morning we picked our way through the coral heads in Abrahams Bay and said farewell to Mayaguana. After a few hours, we were very settled and nearing a couple of little islands called Plana Cays. I sat back in the cockpit to read my book - Moby Dick - when a whale appeared a few hundred yards away. How appropriate. I watch a couple of puffs of mist appear above the waves as it breaths and call 'whale-ho' to the crew below.

Issie gets her lifejacket on quickly and is soon on deck, but Gesa is being her safety conscious self and takes longer to find and don her lifejacket before coming up to see. So it is that Issie and I see the whale briefly lift its head then dive, the flukes of its enormous tail rising gracefully out of the ocean before it slides down to the depths. It doesn't reappear and we didn't get a photo but that's OK says Issie, she saw it and has a picture in her head so she will draw it for us. I can tell Gesa is disappointed though.

I'd chosen to come quite close to these little islands because we could run along the 'drop off' where the island's edge falls away into the ocean depths. Sailing along the hundred foot contour we should have a good chance of catching fish as these undersea cliffs cause vast quantities of nutrients to well up from the deep and a lively food chain develops around them. I'd already seen fish jumping in the water and something fairly big cruising across our path, but no bites yet.

Then we get one, the line goes whizzing off the reel and we swing the boat round to stop and reel in our catch. Sadly, it escapes the hook pretty quickly but we are left with line and lure attached. Out it goes again and Gesa can go back down and rest.

For about two minutes. Zizzzzzzzz goes the fishing reel again and we repeat the procedure, this time the fish is hooked good and proper. We reel in, it pulls back and takes more line, I reel in again. Slowly but surely it gets closer and closer to us, this is a big fish. Maybe it's the whale, says Issie. After fifteen minutes we can see the silver shape twenty feet beneath us. It isn't a whale, but it is big. That shape is familiar though, and it slowly dawns on us - it's a s***ing barracuda. All that effort to reel in one of the biggest ones we've seen to date. We manage to get it right alongside and close enough to snip the line close to the hook, leaving us with our lure but no hook and the fish alive and fairly well - the hook will rust away within a week or two. We watch him swim off.

The line goes out again and we get a third bite, but this is quickly lost as the line breaks near the hook and this time the lure is gone too. That's enough for today, shame, I was looking forward to something edible.

As night falls we settle into our routine of three hours in bed, three on deck, although the kids bug me for the first two hours of my 'off watch' so sleep is a thing of dreams, so to speak. Midnight till three am, that's my next time in my bunk.

Max lost a tooth today, and it has been all wrapped up and placed under his pillow for the tooth fairy. He is very concerned about the practicalities. Firstly, she won't come if she might be seen, so we must all be asleep, I have promised to snooze a little during my watch so she has a five or ten minutes chance to sneak aboard. Then, of course, how will she find us? Can she fly over open water? Won't the waves be too big? Ah, problems problems, but I have a feeling she will find a solution somehow.

Well, the wind has risen a little and we are cruising though the night at six and a half knots, which will have us in harbour for breakfast - hope it lasts.

All's well. N.

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