Big fish are an amazing sight and yesterday shortly before sunset, the first one we have seen since leaving Panama, we saw some. What they were doing was either playing or escaping prey that wanted to eat them for dinner. The largest one I saw looked to be at least six feet long, sort of golden in color, which may have been the sun setting, and leaping well clear of the water time and again. Charlene said it may have been a tuna. There were about a dozen or so of other smaller fish, kind of tiny to maybe a foot or two engaged in the same activity. They moved past the stern of the boat very quickly and that was it. I would prefer to think they were a bunch of young fish playing than consider what wanted to eat them. If there was a predator chasing them I am guessing it was big and very hungry.

We may attempt some fishing ourselves today. Actually, Charlene may fish and I will provide what backup she might need. Stein already has staked a claim on helping gut, bleed and clean whatever is caught. I will provide the saltwater wash-down hose.

We are still bucking a strong current and facing light winds on the nose. I had thought we would be past that now but not yet. Also, I thought the rain was behind us and I was wrong there too. Around 0400 a small rain squall showed up on the radar which I adroitly avoided, which means did not get completely soaked, but the one behind it was real rain. It poured heavily enough to drown out the sound of the diesel for about 20 minutes, then quit. A fresh water rinse is always appreciated, but that was a bit much. One other tidbit from the overnight watch is we had a visitor. Actually, we still have said visitor, a reasonably large bird who was perched on the bow pulpit most of the night. In the dark I passed off the shape as simply the difficulty clearly seeing with the waves and rain etc. As it got light I had a better look and what it appears is this is clearly a sea bird who is using the bow pulpit as a spotting platform for the fish it eats. It sits there looking ahead, almost appearing like the Figurehead on old sailing ships until it spots something. It swoops almost straight down gets its food and flies off to eat it. Once it is done, back it comes to take up the perch again. I am quite happy that it eats elsewhere, otherwise I am sure we would have a very big mess to clean…
More later…..