The "Jolly" crew of Southern Cross are doing fine.
Its been 12 days out at sea. We've traveled a little more than half way now. Which means we ONLY have 1300 miles to go. The seas have been mild to say the least. The Pacific trade winds have come through up till last night. We had a lot of small squalls,
so we brought the sails down for the first time and motored through the night.
Now that the sails are back up today we get to throw the fishing lines in. Have to dig out another Cuban Reel with a bubble lure. Two days ago, must of been a huge fish, hit our favorite colorful lure and cuban reel which was held on with a bungie cord, as we all heard it and then looked, we watched the bungie cord snap in two and jump in the water. Another win for the fish!
Which brings us to our favorite fish story so far.......
Just a few days ago, about 1:00 in the afternoon during Eve's watch, she spotted a 4 ft pole floating up in the water with a little black triangle flag dangling at the top, about 200 yards off our starboard. Steve figures we better check it out, there maybe something to this, we are 1000 miles from nowhere. So we drop the sails and head over. As we get closer we see about 20 empty large coke bottles all tied up together making a float. We are glad to see there is no human attached as we were speculating on the way over to it. But there was a huge school of Maui Maui swimming around this thing in the clear blue water.
There had to be hundreds of them.
We all run for the fishing rods, now we have been fishing with little hand held cheap fishing spools that have all the newest and heavy 100 lb test line that is absolutely of no use in this situation. I brought 4 rods on this trip with only 15 lb test that's old and the 50 lb test line I bought to change them over is still in the bag. And only two of these rods are casting rods which is what you need. So here we are catching these 10 to 20 lb Maui on every cast and as we bring them up to the boat, the lines break and we loose a good silver spoon many times. We were able to get a couple of small ones on board, but compared to the big ones, we threw them back, trying for a big one. Well an hour later, after lots of laughs and excitement, it was time to set sail again. No fish for dinner again. Whats new!
But its a good thing when there isn't much excitement on board. It can mean things are running smoothly. We've had a few minor problems, which seems to average about once a day. Like the ground wire on the Generator came off, A pin sheared off the Gennaker furling gear, and we saved the sail from going in the water, a shackle broke off holding the main sheet to the boom, the water maker is making a weird noise since the second day out, I am so glad I hid 20 one gallons of bottled water under the floor in the bilge.
So we are all hanging in there and doing well.
Kathy, Steve, Dave and Eve