Mahi Mahi

MAHI MAHI

Position: 21D54'.409S 164D54'.607E

Countdown to Australia - 820 nautical miles (less 90 nm sailed already today)

Tuesday, October 25 - Today we set sail for Australia via Chesterfield Reef (halfway point in the middle of nowhere). The plan is to sail for 3 days and arrive at Chesterfield Reef early on Friday morning in order to navigate our way through the reefs and into a safe anchorage inside the lagoon. After spending a few days relaxing at the reef (diving and fossicking) we will continue sailing on to Bundaberg in Australia. We enjoyed our visit to Noumea but unfortunately it was too windy to sail to any of the outer island anchorages and we spent most of our week in the marina or in Bay Maa anchorages which were both protected from the 20 to 26 knot winds to some extent. We did have a good chance to stock up on fuel, water, food, and drinks. We planned for a 10 day journey to Australia which would put us arriving in Bundaberg around November 3. With that in mind Arthur wanted to start fishing in case we ran out of food. We put the trawling line out and attached the rod to the holder on the back of the deck. Meanwhile we rigged up a 'cruisers fishing line'. This was the average man's version of a 'Rex Hunt' trawling line and certainly was effective. We used a snap shackle attached to a cleat with bungy cord, venetian blind cord (like you would naturally have that on a boat), fishing line and a trace with a lure (that Ken from Cosimo kindly gave us) to catch our fish on passage. Within a couple of hours I heard the extra shackle that we attached to the bungy cord jingling across the deck and wondered why Arthur and Ian were still chatting and not pulling in the catch. I alerted them to the fact that a fish was on the end of the line and Arthur started pulling the line in. He got to the end of the rigging and we could see a large Mahi Mahi fighting on the end of the line. The Mahi Mahi was over 1 metre long and weighed around 50 pounds. Ian humanely killed the fish and filleted it so I could put some aside for dinner and the rest for the freezer. We don't enjoy killing fish so we brought the other line in as the Mahi Mahi would be sufficient fresh food for us at least until we reached Chesterfield Reef. With the action over early in the trip Ian and Arthur had a midday snooze in the cockpit while I stayed on watch. We goose winged the headsail and the mainsail and enjoyed excellent downwind speeds between 7 and 8 knots. The afternoon ended in a bright orange sunset over the horizon towards Australia. We were getting so close but it still seemed so far-away.