A downwind sail with following seas - woohoo, we don't get many of those! They are a real treat. No banging, no flapping and no crashing into waves. Just the head sail up, letting the waves push us along and cruising at 6+ knots.
After breakfast at sea, we dropped both hooks in and thought we might play at fishing for our last couple of days. Not half an hour later, ZING ZING! Both the fish pole and the Cuban reel were jumping with something going on with their lines. I rolled in the reel and Steve took the pole. Mine came up empty, something had bitten off both the hook and the pink frilly lure. (Hey, those things aren't free, you know!)
Steve was working the pole and it was bent nearly in half. As he started to reel the fish in, we could see that it was so big it was making its own wake! He brought it up beside the boat and we could see it was enormous - a big snapper (red or black fin), at least 18 pounds!
This beat all of our barracuda catches!
We had planned on grilling the next fish we caught whole (like you get in restaurants, whole grilled fish), but this was way too big to fit on our tiny grill so Steve filleted it and we packed it away into the freezer. I took a couple of the smaller pieces and quickly cooked them in butter with a little bit of salt and pepper. It was amazing, the best fish either one of us had ever tasted!
Dinner was had underway while watching the sunset. We coasted towards Bimini as it got darker and darker. The chart plotter guided us into the anchorage and we anchored using it and a bit of light from the moon. Our first full dark anchoring (we are still learning!). We did a total of 85 miles today in 15 hours, our biggest day yet.
This crossing of large ocean spaces is very interesting. I didn't realise until I got out here how we all are surrounded by people. Out here, we can look in every direction as far as the eye can see and there is no one but us. Strange to be so alone, but inspiring also - it's an amazing world we live in and we seldom get a feel for how big it really is.
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