Sorry for the information black out recently, I've been busy. Let's see, in the last 5 days, I've read 9 books, watched 11 movies and finished two video games. Wow, that's pretty intense.
Loafing around a side, the last several days have been pretty productive. We decided last Sunday to fuel up, take on water, secure "Grouper Style" on a mooring and then head out towards Long Island for some fishing.
By Monday afternoon, we were underway. The wind was light at 8 knots directly behind us as we made our way towards Simms, on the northern end of Long Island, a whopping 22 miles away.
We were still hand steering because our autopilot parts have yet to reach, but other than that it was a pleasant sail. We were making a solid 4 knots with the spinnaker up and 5 fish whackers running out behind us. Two hours in, the windward most whacker started screaming out line.
"ZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!" Fish on baby!
Now admittedly, our experiences of trying to land fish under spinnaker border on the Abbott and Costello frontier, but thanks to a slow and steady wind and repeated past failures, this time we were able to get our newest friend up to the back of the boat and then stab him with our fish gaff without incident. Amy even managed to score a couple of action shots along the way.
See photo evidence, side left and above.
The mahi turned out to be 40 inches in length and just under 23 pounds. Given current Exuma market prices ($18 per pound) and my less than perfect filleting technique, I'll say this guy was a solid two hundred and ten dollar fish. Boo-ya!
Unfortunately, with our freezer currently down thanks to the ice pick terrorists, we are going to be eating mahi around the clock for the next several days. Thanks to a very active hurricane season we have yet to see another cruising boat outside of G'Town, so we can't even trade some of the mahi away for draft picks to be named later. Shitty death!!!!!
Anyhow, with the fish on board, we put away our fishing implements of death and destruction and had a very quiet sail the rest of the way over.
We anchored up in 6 feet of water just off the Simms government clinic by 4 pm. Once the boat was to bed, I fired up the grill and made some high quality, Caribbean jerk mahi steaks, trimmed out with bacon and fresh lime wedges. Amy supplied a simple side salad and two nearly frozen bottles of Pinot and we feasted like kings in the cockpit as the sun went down.
As an side, even the weasels got into the action with three of the four (not Marley) tearing into fresh, raw mahi nuggets. Marley was not introduced to fish as a viable food source before he was an adult and so to this day, he refuses to eat anything but his one brand of EVO weasel chow. Poor dude.
Tomorrow I plan on doing some lobster diving on the rock wall at the base of the cliffs just south of here. From there, if the wind allows, we'll sail down to Thompson Bay for a couple of days before heading back over to G'Town by the weekend where I am pretty sure I have finally worked out all the details to run a small 24 foot power boat back to the U.S. for it's recently relocated owners.
Rest assured, dear reader, that I'll make sure to pack my pink shirt and white linen pants so that I can totally channel my inner Don Johnson on the go fast ride back to the states!
More to follow, end of line ....