Friday 30th May
Uneventful watches throughout the night – the
wind has swung round to the S/SW as forecasted (it’s quite overcast) and
we expect it to swing more to the SE as the day goes on. At 10.30am Tallulah
Ruby radio to tell us they’ve just hooked a huge dorado –
unfortunately they don’t manage to land it. At 11.30 am we hook a dorado
– it’s a team effort but with top fisherman Stewy playing the line,
top gaffer Ian belted onto the transom gaff in hand, able fisherman Brian and
Annie passing up the vodka scoosher, it’s soon aboard. Success at last
– it’s a metre long, and it’s thanks again to those Skippy
and Dotty wedding present lures! Stewy fillets and skins, and it’s bagged
and in the freezer in no time. We’re all delighted as it feels like ages
since we last caught a fish and we were starting to worry that we’d lost
our knack! We’re now motorsailing as the wind has dropped. Not long after
we catch the fish the wind increases and veers round to the S/SW onto a broad
reach, then continues to back to the SE during the course of the day. We enjoy
a feast of pan fried dorado, salad and potatoes – we’d forgotton
how good it tasted! We goose-wing the sails ,now making good speed at 8 –
9 knots. We realise we’re going to arrive too early and we’ll need
to slow the boat down even more to time our arrival for dawn. We roll in some
headsail and put a reef in the main at 8pm – we’re still doing 7-8
knots so put in a second reef at mid-night . The wind steadily increases
and we’re soon up again to 10-11 knots with a SE wind up to 20
knots. It’s a black ,cloudy ,starless night – the waning
crescent moon only appears at 4am. We hear a crash in the night and later Annie
finds bits of a broken radar reflector on the foredeck.