Position: 14 degrees, 23 minutes South; 142 degrees, 21 minutes West

Nice Mahi. Fed us for a week!

After a long night watch with numerous squalls to contend with, I finally got off watch at 0800 and quickly went to sleep only to be awoken an hour later by Ann’s excited shout of “FISH ON!” She was sitting in the cockpit when she heard the sharp slap of the line being pulled off the clothespin that we hook it to for just that purpose-so we can hear it get slapped to the deck. The bigger the fish the bigger the slap and this one hit hard. She looked up at where the lure was trailing behind and saw a large fish jump out of the water. Whoo hooo, game on!

I jumped up and hit my head on the top of the berth. OK, time to slow down a little-still groggy from just having fallen asleep, I staggered up the companionway stairs. “How big?” I asked. “Pretty big”, the reply. When I make it up on deck, she had the line in her already gloved hand and was starting to pull it in. “Hold on, we have to slow the boat down first”. Pulling in a fish of any size while going six knots is harder than it needs to be and since it was just dragging through the water on our hand-line, we had time to get things in order before bringing it aboard. Especially important if it’s a big fish that we want/need to subdue fast before it can do any damage. Fish bonker-check, rope to tie it with-check, knife-check, icepick-check, my gloves-check and on, gaff-um, “Where’s the gaff?” “It’s coming”.

” OK, everything’s ready, l’ll pull it in around the cleat and you take in the slack”.

While I’m pulling it in, at first it seemed like we’d lost it. The line was very slack, but it didn’t take long before the fish noticed what was going on and started fighting back. Yes, a good sized fish was on the line. When we got it near the transom we could see a flash of bright green and blue. Mahi! Bring it alongside, aim, got him! Pull up on the gaff and he’s out of the water and still fighting. Break out the fish bonker and voila, (see how we always practice our French?) fish landed and in the scuppers. This one’s a beaut. A good 40 inches. Nice. I’ve been hoping we’d catch a fish to supplement our supplies for the next few weeks. The choices of main course food in Nuku Hiva were OK, just not very inspiring and fresh fish really adds to the day.

A couple hours later and we have filets and have cleaned up the deck. In the fridge are six one-gallon size zip bags with a total of 20 filets and a bag full of scrap meat for fish chowder. Most of it fits under the freezer unit which will nicely freeze them and allow them to last long enough for us to enjoy all the fish without any waste due to spoilage. Yay.

About last night-it started out a gorgeous moonlit, star-filled night. The moonlight dancing across the waves was an inspiration. Ann got the first watch and I went to sleep from about 2200-0200. Coming on watch the first thing I noticed was the sky was now full of clouds. Uh oh, squally night. Ann confirmed that the clouds were building and we had dodged a rainy one just a little while earlier. After she went to sleep, I gathered my rain jacket, and made other preparations to “batten down the hatches” in case of a squall. It didn’t take long before the preparations were put in use. After about an hour I saw what looked like a little squall up ahead. I went down below and turned on the radar to have a look (radar will “bounce” back from the rain and therefore is a good way to “see” a fully developed squall). Saw some green speckles about 8 miles off. “Hmmm, doesn’t look too bad”. I decided to have another look in five minutes to see if it developed at all and somewhat to my surprise the little speckles at 8 miles were now bright green, yellow and red returns (signaling heavy hits) at six miles. OK, time to get ready. Checklist: All hatches and portholes shut tight (I left the starboard side open for air as the squall was approaching on the port side, I felt the rain wouldn’t come in the starboard ports), companionway boards in, jacket on, pfd and tether back on. Just as I got the tether snapped back on, it started to sprinkle and I felt the cooler breeze meaning the squall was just about on us. The last thing on the list is to furl the jib down to a smaller size in case the wind increases. It had been blowing 15 knots and I furled it down to about half the size. No sooner had I finished and the blast of wind hit, suddenly accelerating to 30 knots. Whew, just in time and Charisma shot off down a wave at 7-8 knots but well under control. Had I not reefed in time, we would have rounded up and things would have been much less fun. Once the wind hit, the 30 knots was sustained. Then the rain dumped. And dumped. And dumped. Good thing I put on a rain jacket.

So, all in all, even though it was a nasty little squall, we were ready and rode through with relative ease (and a some very soggy pants).

The rest of the night was just stunning in a different way than it started. Early on it was all stars and moon, after the squall I spent the night watching the incredible power of two huge squalls receding in the distance. The one we went through and an even larger one that passed in front of us. Both looked like huge explosions. They painted the sky black from the water, where they were dumping rain in huge quantities, all the way up to 30,000+ feet where the tops were blowing off into the night sky.

Amazing.

As I write this, it’s 1700 and we’re about 100 miles out from Raroia, our first landfall in the Tuamotus. Our hope is our speed holds tonight and we get in early in the morning. Slack water for the low tide appears to be at somewhere around 0900 or so in the morning and that’s when our best shot at getting in through the reef will be. Stay tuned.