Cloudy Bay - 7 Dec: Sailing, Marlin and dolphins

What a day again! The whole night and morning we had great speed from our Gennie! She doesn’t stop pulling... as long as there is wind though, we had up till 18 knots during the day and we were flying straight to St. Lucia. Later on, it dropped back to around 10 knots and changed direction :/ so, we were tacking along to get the best course.

As we finished our fish the other day, our lure is out again. Yesterday we caught a small fish (of unknown species) which we released and we had again a big one we couldn’t reel in close enough to see what it was. This time it got lose without the lure still attached :) BUT today... we reeled in a monster! Technically it was not a monster, but a beautiful blue Marlin!! It put on a pretty good fight, but Sanne didn’t give in! We decided it would be a catch and release. As I was grabbing the line and lift it out of the water, it wiggled its way of the hook! Luckily, because we were ready to cut the line as he was smacking himself against the boat :( it was such a beautiful and ferocious beast! Hope he/she will live a long life!

After dinner we have the habit of playing sh*thead (a card game). While we were playing the sun set and dolphins came jumping towards the boat! It was a long time since we have seen them. They were with a lot, must be around 40 dolphins. About 20 of them playing around the bow while sailing towards the sunset has something magical! With the three of us we sat on the bow just watching them play and jump without touching the boat.

Let’s hope the wind stays stable during the night. If so, we expect to arrive in St. Lucia somewhere between Tuesday and Wednesday night/ morning. We just realized today that in that case tomorrow will be our last full day sailing. Time goes fast...

Ilse