We’ve had another spectacular day of gentle sailing. Sunny, steady light breeze, clipping along at 4 - 5 knots, flat seas, warm air and water. Pretty sure it doesn’t get better than that, unless you’re in a hurry and want to go faster, which comes with other enhancements.
A few hours ago, Isabel hit the rack and left me to drive around in the dark. All well, then suddenly the wind went from 8 knots to 6 knots, then up to 15 knots. It wasn’t long before the wind waves began to build and we were crashing along close hauled. It’s good Isabel decided to sleep in the aft cabin tonight, as the forward master bunk is a little “bouncy” right now. In any kind of rough seaway our aft 3/4 berth is the rack of choice.
The wind is all over the place, so when it appeared we were actually going almost due West instead of towards the North, I tacked and within minutes we were headed Southeast. Tacked back and forth several times until finally throwing up my hands in despair and gave up fighting Mother Nature. Never gonna win that one.
My fourth of July fireworks consisted of being awakened at 0700 by the AIS alarm. Turned out a large freighter was crossing our bow about 1.5 miles away, and the proximity values I’d previously programmed into the AIS for offshore environs set a warning alarm at 2 miles. That alarm would wake the dead.
Somehow our fishing turned into catching today, and we landed three nice mahi mahi. There were two females and a male, and that guy gave me a fight. We fish with hand lines attached with a bungee for shock absorption, and our method for dealing with them is to pull the line in slowly until I can gaff the fish, alternatively if the hook is really well set drag the bugger up onto the lower step and grab it by the tail. Next, into the Homer bucket the fish goes head first while I hang on to the tail. Kind of reminds me of WWF “wrastlin’”. Isabel then hands me “the knife” and I proceed to slice the fish’s gills to bleed it out as rapidly as possible. Isabel dumps a bit of water in the bucket to keep the blood flowing and then it gets interesting.
Mahi mahi are tough fish, and they seem to do fine with most of their blood outside their bodies. Once the fish is bleeding I continue to hang on, watching the fish’s eyes, waiting for it to begin. The fish will flop back and forth but as the end nears the frequency of motion increases dramatically until it’s almost a high frequency vibration. Whether it’s a nervous system response or something more I’ll never know. I look the fish in the eye and tell it we’ll honor it by not wasting its life - the flesh will sustain us.
Might sound a little woo woo, but I’ve trended that way the past few days, huh?
Bet your ass we had mahi mahi in our Thai curry for supper tonight, and we were grateful for it.
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