Fish killer
While I’d love to fish more, we have completely full freezers with other proteins and veg, so I have to pace myself. We caught a small mahi mahi and were able to successfully pull the hook out and return the juvenile to mama ocean. But, as mahi mahi travel in pairs, for life, we got two simultaneous strikes two days ago, and Don managed to reel in the female partner. We bent our fish net as she was a fighter, but Josh got her on-board and I did the kill and processing. She was 3.5′ and easily 18 lbs. When I process fish, I try to harvest at least 50% of the meat from the carcass (see waste management goal article here of 40-50%). You all be the judge on how well I did. So far, we’ve had Peruvian ceviche, sushi, and will have grilled fillets tonight. Go Team Enjoy!
Fruit and veg killer
Twas a crime scene as bad as the mahi mahi but with mold! While experts claim you can wrap cabbages in newspaper and store in a dark area, they LIED! OK, so maybe construction paper isn’t the same as newspaper, but who has newspaper anymore? I was doing my weekly inspection of the “celler” aka, Tali’s cabin, and boy did it stink! Let’s just say, no one wants to see moldy fruit and veg. I was able to salvage a good amount of both the cabbages, and the limes/orange hoard which had all been wrapped in tin foil and stored seperately.
Get ready for a bumpy ride!
The good news is that we’re 50% through our passage and are looking at another 14-16 days sailing. How has it been? No milk run for sure! The ride has been very bumpy, but at least we’ve been able to sail all but 1.5 days the first week to get to the Galapagos. Beautiful sunrises and sunsets for sure, and since the last thunderstorm, mostly clear, sunny skies. Every morning, I get up and collect the dead flying fish and squids aboard. The highest daily count was 17 squid and 2 flying fish.
We set off from Panama within days of a few other boats, and we’ve been comparing notes with some via IridiumGo, and others via Whatsapp if they have Starlink. While some pushed hard to go South sooner, it’s not like they’re seeing better waves patterns than us. It’s due to a storm that’s still making it’s way from the Indian Ocean. As a result, we’ve just not been able to get away from 3m waves, often coming in multiple directions. So, it’s been very hard to sail a Southerly course with the SE/E winds and current that just manages to be against us most times. We gave only managed 3 degrees South since crossing the equator, but you can see our progress on NoForeignLand here (also on the website header Enjoy’s journey so far).
Almost famous!
We haven’t been using him yet for weather tracking, but researching weather patterns, Don came across MetBob’s marine weather service website. And can you believe, but sheer randomness, he highlighted our boat amongst all the purple recreational boats sailing West this week. You can check out metbob’s services here.
