Fish!
12 August 2012
Lolo
Today, we (Mark) caught a fish. I had a beautiful sleep this morning from 6am to about 10. The seas were down a bit, the boat's motion had calmed, and the day had not yet heated up. Mark probably mentioned in a previous post that conditions coming out from the lee of the Big Island were �... a bit boisterous. Sheesh! Back to the fish: shortly before the end of Mark's watch, around 11:30 or so, we had a bite on the line. Mark pulled in the beautiful male mahi mahi as I readied the cockpit by dousing it with salt water, got the gaffe out (ugh) and the alcohol with which to drown him quickly. I was sad to see him die, but glad for the fresh fish to eat! Mark had been reading the "fishwife's cookbook" on his watch this morning so he was ready and went straight to getting ceviche ready for dinner later and he also pan fried a small piece in an improvised (delicious) sauce for lunch. Yum! We froze the rest for grilling and enjoying later. The wind and swell picked up again during my watch, and the sun scorched on - while Mark tried to sleep. We've been making really good time sailing in 15 to 25 knots mostly from the east, although the wind backed some today and is more of an east northeast now. We made 170 miles again and 160 miles noon to noon today. We are at present about 160 nautical miles away from Palmyra, giving us an anticipated arrival sometime tomorrow evening. Because we have to wait for daylight and slack water to get through the pass into the lagoon, we probably won't actually arrive in the lagoon until the day after. As the sun lowered on the horizon this evening, life on deck suddenly became perfect - soft light, cool breeze, delightful temperature - we ate our ceviche dinner and looked for the green flash - but none for us tonight. Time for Mark to check the weather and me to have a nap.