Another damn billfish! Today it was a fairly large and old sailfish. The older they are the darker they tend to be. Compare it to the sailfish we caught off of Panama at the end of April last year--which had very bright colors. This guy was over 7 feet long. Fun to catch, and he did a ton of tail-walking and pirouettes. But, as soon as we saw his first pirouette, I thought "oh no, not again". It takes a long time to get these guys in, and it is always on the smallest reel!! He burned out so much line, so fast, that the reel is no longer working properly. The reel was hot to the touch and smelled like burning plastic. It would have been much better if he had taken the lure on one of our big Penn 50 VSX reels -- made to handle big fish. To make matters worse the wind was blowing 25-28kts on the nose, and we were in a really steep 2M chop. Fortunately, however, Amy and Stephen did all the work of reeling this guy in. heh heh. I wish we knew what he weighed. Why can't we catch a nice Mahi Mahi or a tuna, or a Spanish mackerel or something like that? Perhaps it was the Captain Harry's fishing hat I was wearing, complete with sailfish logo on the front. Great fishing store in Miami, where we purchased a fair bit of our gear, including the rod this fish was caught on.

After the bruising sail, and the big fish battle, we ended up at Namenalala island for the night. This is a small pretty island with an expensive off the grid resort. The water was gorgeous as usual, but the anchorage was rolly so we left quickly in the morning to sail to Makogai.