December 19, 2011 Day 3
27 19 N latitude 77 05 W longitude
428 miles from Myrtle Beach, SC
37 miles from Marsh Harbor, Bahamas
Hello Everybody,
First thing this morning, before anyone else was out of bed, Ben and Leo
caught a 10-12 pound Mahi. Ben reeled it in on the young guys side, so they
were feeling really proud of themselves. Geezers 2, youngsters 1. Then
about 0900 after Ben had gone to bed, he was awakened by the jib car
rattling on deck over his head, which meant the sail was flogging, so he got
out of bed to see why. He discovered that Pete and Leo each had a fish on!
As he climbed on deck he called out that there were 2 fish on, which woke
me. Ben quickly rolled up the sails to slow the boat, then started the
engine as I joined the group on deck. Starting the engine woke Jake, who
joined the rest of us on deck for the excitement. The 2 lines were
seriously crossed, tangled and covered with Sargasso weed. Leo had to hand
his rod off to Ben so he could go down on the back deck to get the lines
straigntened out and allow Pete to reel in a nice little Mahi for the
Geezers, about 8 pounds. Then the work began. It turned out that Leo’s
fish had taken all but about 2 wraps of line around the reel, almost
spooling him. He had been cranking it in, but the fish continued to take
line, so it was a difficult battle. When Ben took the rod most of the line
was still out there. As Ben fought the fish, the fish took some line, Ben
reeled some in, the fish took more, Ben got more in, and still the fish was
along way away. Jake began driving the boat to take the pressure off the
line. It took a while, but helped enough that finally Ben got the fish
close to the boat, only to have the fish see the boat and take off again.
More cranking. As Ben finally got the fish close enough to the boat to
consider gaffing it, Peter jumped down on the back deck with Leo. Leo got
the line in his hand and managed a perfect gaff, but then called to Peter
for help. He couldn’t lift the fish out of the water by himself. And no
wonder! The guys had caught about an 80# bull Mahi. It measured 62″ long
(that’s only 1″ shorter than I am) and 32″ in circumference. When they laid
him across the back deck he filled the whole width. As they filleted him,
1/2 the length of his filet took the entire length of our fish cleaning
table. We got 15 packages of meat, each packaged to feed 3. And we saved
the head for fish water. The entire adventure took over an hour. We got
some good phots of the fish and fishermen, which we will try to post when we
have internet. After adding 3 Mahi to our larder, we thought we would then
go to a catch and release program, but there was so much weed around that
we finally called a moritorium on fishing for the day. So at the end of the
day it”s Geezers 3, proud young pups 2.
Planning our arrival into Marsh Harbor was the other important issue of the
day. The sun rises at 0715 and we can’t head in around the reefs until it
is daylight, so we don’t want to get there too early. We had been making 7
and 8 knots, but as we get closer we need to slow down. We now have about 8
hours until daylight and 27 miles to go. We’ve put a big reef in the main
and had reefed the staysail as well for a bit, which has us sailing at just
under 4 knots. We have to just creep along slowly enough to meet the time
frame, but fast enough to maintain steerage. It’s an ususual problem,
that’s for sure.
All the best from avalanche, looking forward to whatever sunrise brings and
many new adventures in the Bahamas.
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