Photo: Dinner!

We left Spanish Wells yesterday and staged at Royal Island before crossing the Northeast Providence Channel to Great Abaco. Once we started into the channel, the seas built up to 6-8 foot swells from the northeast, with wind chop from the south confusing the surface. Another boat that had departed Spanish Wells this morning called on the VHF to inform us of a line of squalls approaching from the west, and we turned our radar on to start tracking its progress. The channel is a major shipping route as well, and we had four large ships pass by within five miles and less, including one we spoke with that was on its way to Egypt.

The squalls were easily visible on radar, and in anticipation of a wind shift followed by 25-30-knot winds, we decided to drop our mainsail and bring the jib in a bit. The wind literally flattened the seas, and this time Semper V got a full fresh water shower the natural way!

Once the squalls blew through we carried on towards Little harbour, but decided not to proceed through the cut there as the swells were still quite large and the tide was low. We instead went through North Bar Channel and anchored at Spencer's Bight. On the way in, I started hauling in our fishing line that we trailed behind us. I felt some resistence, and figured that we had caught yet another clump of seaweed. No one was more surprised than myself when I saw a flash of silver at the end of the line, and I hauled in a little tunny!

Finally, some redemption as a hunter-gatherer! I was beginning to think that we wouldn't catch a thing during our entire Bahamas leg of the cruise, but tonight we enjoyed fresh fish!