It's a Long Shot II

That's the sound of the second stainless steel, gold plated West Marine rod holder shearing off from it's mount and heading to the bottom of the sea, narrowly missing Charlie's leg in the process as it flew 30ft away. That followed by Doug's expletives indicating his opinion of their workmanship: they look Skookum but they aren't meant for a marlin or a tuna. We were all on deck to act as the rod holder for Charlie...again. We were clipping along at 7kts and Charlie begged us to stop so while the boys tried to hang onto the rod as the line was screaming out, Doug and I were furling the headsail and turning into the wind. Then the process began of wondering what the heck we had as nothing was breaking the surface. Right up to the boat, that fish stayed deep. Charlie was hoping it wasn't another Mahi and he wasn't disappointed. Up it came, a great big tuna - a 20kg Big Eye Tuna to be exact. There is so much meat on this sucker we'll be able to have tuna when we hit Victoria. Now Doug has to come up with a rod holder too!

As we head North we have been looking at the stars and heading to Haku Pa'a (North Star). We took in a cultural session in Hawai'i that showed us how the Polynesians sailed by the stars from French Polynesia to Hawai'i and back. It was very interesting and humbling at the same time. I'm sad to say that we haven't dragged out the sextant at all. We've had a great sail in one metre seas and a warm breeze from the South. Sarah Jean II was saying how cold the North wind is that they are sailing in at 48N so we'll enjoy this for as long as we can. We saw a big turtle a few hundred miles North of Hawaii and the graceful Albatross has been hanging with us again. We haven't seen these big birds for awhile so it's a welcoming sight. At 34N we still had Flying Fish on deck but I'm thinking that'll end soon. Lots of garbage in the water: styrofoam, floating buoys, bundles of rope, etc. We didn't see much flotsam in the South Pacific at all. Today is laundry day as we've had two days of rain so when the sun comes out it's time to hang our gear from every available perch. Not sure what our ETA will be in Victoria but we are just about halfway there. The weather sounds fantastic so hope to take advantage of that when we get there.