Day 15, another lure donated to Davey Jones locker
06 June 2021 | 03 49.728'S:104 21.936'W, At sea to Nuku Hiva
NC
6th June
03 49.728 S
104 21.936 W
Weather; warm and sunny, wind 5-15 knots, waves 1.5-2 metres
I don't know about it being more interesting today, if anything it's a bit of Groundhog Day! From 10am until midday we continued to cruise along at a reasonable pace but then the wind took off for places unknown to us and we began to wallow around doing anything from 2.5 to 4.5 knots for the rest of the day and well into the night. The good thing was that we must have had a current running with us to be moving along at all. Gerry was determined to not start the motor for some reason so we just put up with the slower pace and the sails flopping around and occasionally filling and pushing us forward. We read , watched the water world go by Ð there was nothing to see as there were no dolphins, no whales and not another boat anywhere in the miles of sea surrounding us; we had lunch and then decided to amuse ourselves by putting out the fishing stick. I went below to fiddle about making a chocolate cherry pie leaving Gerry in charge of the fishing, when I was about to climb back u
p the companionway steps the fishing line suddenly began to zing out, Gerry woke with a start (yes he had fallen asleep) and jumped up to apply the clutch as he was closest to the rod. Then began the bit which has become our mantra, here fishy fishy and Gerry reeled away until the fish was alongside the boat Ð it was a good size Mahi Mahi, not as big as the one we landed the other day but enough to feed us for a few days. I did my usual getting ready with the gaff, gloves and camera as Gerry dragged the fish out of the water, it was putting up one hell of a protest and thrashing about for all it was worth. I tried several times to gaff it but it was so mobile that I just couldn't get the gaff into it and at the very last minute it managed to put enough strain on the line to break it and make its escape. Talk about disappointed but there was nothing to be done about it, we had lost another fish along with another lure. The rest of the line was brought in and a new lure attac
hed and the line thrown back in Ð just in case! We wondered out loud if anyone ever catches fishes with hooks and or lures stuck in them because we know for a fact that some of those lures belong to us! Whilst it is really good to have fresh fish straight out of the sea and onto the plate we have speculated about the cost incurred in that one or two meals, if the fishermen are anything like Gerry and I they spend a fortune on equipment to catch just one darned fish. Of course we didn't catch anything else all day, there was a momentary zinging out of the line but it was brief and whatever had tried to take the lure had obviously had second thoughts and spat it out as quickly as it had tried to swallow it. Gerry even went for an afternoon nap to try and encourage a strike but to no avail Ð we had had our chance and messed it up for the day, maybe tomorrow? I think I mentioned that the dawn and dusk hours seemed to be getting later and we changed our clocks by an hour to tr
y and compensate for the change, not really knowing what the correct time is but at least the sun set was about when we expected it to be now and it was a really spectacular one for a change, no clouds and the sky turned all shades of orange, then lemon as the sun vanished below the horizon. Gerry said he saw the green flash tonight, I think he was hallucinating as it didn't happen; mind you I did have my eyes on the camera image rather than the actual sun disappearing so maybe he did see it and the quest is now half achieved. The stars were once again spectacular , thousands of them twinkling away in a clear dark sky but there was no moon and it eventually became pitch black so we couldn't see a thing anywhere around the boat. There were a couple of what we assume were fishing boats with bright lights on the horizon at a couple of points during the night but none of them were of any concern to us as they were miles away. Sometime around midnight the wind finally returned a
nd our speed picked up considerably, making up for the extremely slow daytime sail. We saw between 6 and 7 knots for pretty much the rest of the night which brought our daily mileage up to 141NM with no engine hours. So once again not an exciting day but we are 1886 NM closer to Nuku Hiva with about 2000 more to go. This was the first day of our third week at sea since leaving Panama Ð how time flies, we have no idea what is happening in the world outside our little bubble and no way of finding out much until we get to civilization and internet, maybe we are better off not knowing!