Starblazer - 08/05/2017 – An interesting day!

The 24 hours from noon Sunday to noon Monday presented us with a few
challenges. From a sailing point of view, the wind held through to about
0600 when it began to drop a little. From 0900 to noon it also veered,
bringing the wind further behind us. The problem with this is that the
mainsail blanks the genoa which cannot draw properly, causing the genoa to
lose the plot and flap idly! This, of course, affects the speed. The day’s
statistics make good reading for a boat of our size. Overall, the day’s run
was 166nM, an average of a hair’s breadth under 7 knots. This average
includes the last 6 hours when we only managed 38nM, a 6.33knot average.
Tomorrows figures are likely to be bad.

We are occasional fishermen, i.e. when one of us thinks about putting a lure
in the water. John put in a bright pink lure during the afternoon and more
or less forgot about it. About 5 minutes before the dinner was due out of
the oven his reel screeched and something big made away with his lure. John
slowly tightened the drag, allowing the fish to run a bit, stop, try again
etc. In the end he decided to leave the fish on the line while we had
dinner. When he finally managed to pull the fish alongside we discovered a
beautiful 3’6” – 4’0” long Marlin. What to do with it? It was far too big
for us, it hadn’t finished fighting and it had an evil looking bill. We
decided we had to let it go, but how? Eventually John lifted him out of the
water, still on the rod, and we cut the wire trace. The hook should rust
through pretty quickly and it shouldn’t affect the fish’s ability to feed.
While this was going on we headed up to wind, allowing the sails to slat and
consequently reduced our speed to 3 knots. It was, however, in a good
cause.

Lunch on Sunday was open sandwiches with Proscuito, ham, cheddar, camembert
and a blue cheese, not altogether on the same slice in case you are
wondering! Dinner was pan roasted stuffed chicken thighs, roast potatoes,
pumpkin, carrots and tomatoes. As a treat I had bought, and hidden, two
slices of Georgia Pecan Pie. It wasn’t quite as sweet and sticky as the
Minnesota version I remember.

As you can see, not a lot happened yesterday though it is worth saying that
the wall to wall sunshine kept up our energy demands until sunset. Today
there has been no sun so we have run the little generator for three hours,
now we are running the main engine in neutral because that will give us a
tank of hot water.

Joyce