Day 10 Date: Saturday, April 22nd, 2018 Time: 17:00 UTC Location: 06° 51.0’N 121° 09.2′ W COG: 224° T SOG: 6.5 knots 24 hour distance traveled: 156 nm Distance to the Marquesas: 1483 nm
This morning I woke up to the fishing line going off. All the usual commotion commenced but it became clear that we didn’t catch what we expected. When I came on decks Cameron firmly had in his hands a beautiful white bird and Adelaide was handing him wire cutters to free it. I jumped in to crimp down the barb on the hook and we slid it out and the bird was freed and flew off. So if you can all say a little prayer that the bird recovers and hopefully, he will stay away from lures trailing after boats!
We had fish tacos today from the Skipjack Tuna that we caught yesterday afternoon (third fish in three days!). I used the last of the cilantro and we made one last delicious salsa fresca to top our tacos. The fresh things are dwindling and Isa keeps looking at me with big eyes saying, “Mama, what do we have that is FRESH”? The answers are getting fewer and fewer. But there are still a few small watermelons left, lots of jicama, and limes. We are clearly either in or very near to the ITCZ (Inter Tropical Convergence Zone, which, as it happens is not synonymous with the horse latitudes… same phenomenon, different location in the world – the wonderful things you learn while skimming the on board reading material). We went through a delightfully wet squall earlier today, thoroughly washing down the boat but not too much wind, just enough to be a little exciting. On the other side of that squall, we saw some south easterly winds, which is what we will be seeing once we reach the other side of the ITCZ. So far we still have some fairly good winds (10-15 knots) which have now clocked back to easterly. We have the main sail out on one side of the boat and the genoa polled out on the other side which is called a wing-on-wing configuration. This lets us go downwind and it is working rather well as we are going 7 knots right now! In the last 24 hours we did our personal best 0f 156nm when it comes to distance traveled in 24 hours. This afternoon Cameron and the girls are going to make some homemade lures out of old coke cans, fabric and a used chip bag. Cameron has had some success with homemade lures in the past so we’ll see how this goes. We tried them across the Atlantic in 2002 with little success. These will hopefully replace the lures that have been snagged by big fish! Our goal now is to really focus on small fish that we can consume daily. They are easier to land and easier on our gear and the boat.
This is SV Banyan, signing off