Footnotes from Water Music

For the last day's run we are posting twice. One devoted to the OB's admiration of the autopilot, the other (this one) picking up any highlights from yesterday.

Well the day started in much the same way as previous ones. The calm was punctuated by cries of Fish!, but always with the same result. Whatever beast it was on the end, we seem to lose them as we were just going too fast to reel them in. More often that not the strikes came in twos, including one in the middle of Listen With Norm.

We were just about to give up for the evening, when the lines started to run again. One fish quite quickly jumped off, but the second one stayed with us. We switched the engine on and engaged reverse gear in an attempt to slow down the boat and slowly but surely reeled the fish in. When she got close up to the transom, we started to see the size of the beast and it tried on several occasions to wrap itself around rudder, keel and prop shaft. After another 20 minutes, both skipper and fish were exhausted and, with the help of the gaff, we landed the fish in the aft cockpit well. that was the idea, but sadly rather optimistic as a place to accommodate this fish, which was comfortably 5 feet long. We again reached for "Mediterranean Fishes" for identification - ruling out Wahoo and Marlin along the way. We had landed ourselves a pretty large Swordfish.

Gutting, cleaning took place in the near darkness, but we at least had some to go into what would have been a vegetable curry. After a bumpy night last night, we separated the fish into steaks, curries and ceviche. Probably enough food to give us sustenance to Tahiti and certainly more than enough to Marquesas.

Back to the more daily life, at the time of writing we have under 500 miles left to run and are enjoying a growing moon at night. Last night the moon set at midnight and was bright enough to light most of the sky. Sunset continues to be a really special time of day - from now on it wont be disturbed by the high pitch whine of either fishing reel.