We were enjoying a beautiful, sunny afternoon, yesterday. Jon pointed to a small school of flying fish to port, skimming along about five feet from NS, headed in the direction of her bow. Suddenly, a mahi-mahi (dorado) leaped after them. He was about a foot out of the water and parallel to its surface. We saw him in profile and could easily see his distinctive high forehead. He was a brilliant, iridescent blue in color and about 18 inches long. Beautiful fish!
We are continually removing flying fish from the deck and this morning Jean found a squid about eight inches long. This brings to mind the technique used by fishermen on Kauai to troll for tuna. It is quite different from what the sport fishermen do in Mexico, where they have fairly typical outriggers, one on either side of the boat, angled upward at about 45 degrees, serving to spread a number of individual lines. In Port Allen, the boats have a single, flexible, pole, vertical at the center of the boat. It is much stouter than the outriggers on the sport fishermen in Mexico, and unlike them, needs no spreaders or shrouds. And, unlike them, it is tapered and meant to bend. It is, in fact, a huge whip. From this whip they haul a wide bar, the width of the transom and which is, if I recall, known as a sled. It trails behind the boat, on the surface, parallel to the transom. Though the sled serves to spread a number of individual lines, what sets it apart from other line spreaders is that it is weighted so that in conjunction with the whip it continually jumps out of the water. It puts a huge drag on the pole, which bends all the way back so that its tip is above the stern before it whips back, lifting the sled and all the lures out of the water. The artificial squid lures, by leaping as the do, are acting just like the squid that ended up on our deck this morning. Fishermen say that a tuna gets so excited when a squid jumps out of the water to elude it, that it will hit the lure in a vertical leap that takes it far above the surface.
This fishing technique brings to mind the first fish we caught on NS, a skipjack tuna, while en route from Baja to Mazatlan. The lure would hop out of the water continually. I have since discussed the advisability of adding a bit of weight with a number of fishermen. Those from the Northwest seem to favor this idea, perhaps because most fishing up there is done deep. Now from observing this squid on deck and talking to fishermen in Port Allen I understand that we probably would have missed that skipjack had we used weight.
Currently, I am running the watermaker and the engine. I do this once every three days. With three of us on board, we are using about a five gallon of fresh water a day, so I make 15 gallons of water and charge the batteries for two hours. Jean is on watch, and in her spare time is cleaning the deck. Jon is off watch and is trying to sleep while this is going on.
For the past 22 hours we have been sailing close hauled on the starboard tack, with full main and the staysail set on the headstay. With these sails and this point of sail, NS balances perfectly, and it is a joy to watch Rangval steer her effortlessly.
As I mentioned in yesterday's post, we are expecting the high, which has recently been north of us, to move east. When that happens, the NE wind should veer progressively to the east and then to the south. That way, we should be lifted and our direction should start changing more easterly, as Rangal follows the apparent wind. But it appears that the high is still north of us and, in fact, we have been headed a bit, so we are currently farther to the west than we have ever been in spite of being close hauled. I will breathe a sigh of relief when I see the wind begin to veer.
A freighter headed for San Francisco crossed our path perpendicularly yesterday afternoon, passing about 30 miles to the south. That is the first sign of human activity we have seen in days.
At UTC 2200, July 20, 2012, we are at 36 56.990 N, 160 11.463 W. Our day's run was 98 miles.
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