Day 231, Saturday, Feb 8

Day 231, Saturday, Feb 8

Sailed from Georgetown to Lee Stocking island.  Got away around 8:00 after having a lovely good-bye with Gwen and Guiomme.  As we were leaving, Dennis and Tracey dinghied out to say farewell as they will be gone when we return.

The winds were about 12 knots from the back quarter (broad reach), so we decided to raise the assymetrical sail (big colourful one that looks similar to a spinnaker).  We had put out the fishing line as soon as we were through the cut into deeper water, and just as Dawson was about to take the sock off the monster sail, Julie hear a zinging noise and sure enough we had a fish.  Timing was pretty good.  Julie put the monster sail back below and prepare for hoisting what could be a huge fish aboard.  This entailed, getting the net out, an old towel, a knife, cutting board, and a spritzer filled with alcohol.  Now we chose Glen Fiddich as we have had 3 small bottles on board compliments of Roma since the beginning of the trip and they aren’t getting drank so rather than our cheap rum that we do drink  we are donating the good scotch to the fish.  The idea is to spray alcohol on their gills as soon as you get the fish aboard as it kills them. 

It took Dawson about 30 minutes to reel in the line.  We did not want to lose our dinner as this was our first major catch from the boat.  We had bought the downrigger rod for our old boat and never caught anything.  In Nassau we had gone into a fishing store and got advice and they hooked us up with proper lures and bait for the big water.  After about 15 minutes the fish was jumping out of the water, and we could see it was a beautiful lime green colour and luckily a manageable size, a mahi mahi, also called a dorado or dolphin fish.   We got the fish onboard.  It was too big for the net, but it was pretty tired by the time we hoisted it into the cockpit.  Julie spritzed the 2 ounces of scotch and after only a few squirms the fish was quiet.   Dawson cut the head off to “bleed” it, and we then just put it on ice packs in a cooler that it did not really fit in very well.

We finished our sail, which was about another 2 hours, then an hour going across 8 feet of water slowly to our anchorage.  Once safely anchored we were off to shore to clean our dinner.  The skin needed to be pulled off which was a bit of a challenge, but we managed and Dawson was able to get some lovely fillets, enough for about 5 meals.  Back on the boat to get the fillets rinsed and into the freezer except for tonight’s feast portion.

We finish our day with some dominoes, a delicious fish dinner and fabulous kicking horse coffee that Marcene brought us.

Cheers

Julie and Dawson