Day 8 New Zealand to New Caledonia
07 August 2011 | 25 50.52S 169 20.12E
Katie
What a beautiful day yesterday was with light winds, slight seas and plenty of sunshine. The warmth felt absolutely wonderful. Just as Jim was finishing his shower I noticed the handline we were dragging behind Tenaya bouncing about. We'd caught a fish! The brilliant blue body and vibrant yellow fins meant we'd caught a dorado. Jim was on deck in no time pulling him in. What a beauty and what a fighter. We haven't had luck pouring rum in their gills to kill them, guess I'm too stingy on the rum, so we bought a spike to punch through the brain and kill it quickly. Hopefully practice makes perfect, as the back deck looked like the scene of a horrific massacre. His 150 cm long body (tip of tail fins to protruding lower jaw) filled up three big ziplock bags with delicious mahi-mahi.
Today the confused seas are back, albeit not very large. Just bouncy. Sailing on a course of 300 degrees, the wind is on the beam so can potentially move us pretty quickly. We don't want to move quickly. For the last 24 hours we've been intentionally going slow to arrive at the pass in the reef tomorrow morning. The tiniest amount of sail hangs from Tenaya's forestay and mast as we enjoy this last day of solitude, surrounded only by sea and sky. Tomorrow - a new destination to explore. Thanks to Brynn and the crew at Commanders Weather for six weeks of trying to find us a weather window. You picked a good one.