Usually we dread too little wind on passages, because that means rolling in confused seas and flapping seas. This time though, wind and seas gradually calmed down together, so this morning Pitufa is gliding over flat seas in only 8 knots of breeze. It’s sunny, no clouds in the sky and the sea has this peculiar shade of blue that is so dark it almost looks purple (for some reason we only see that colour south of 20 degrees S).
Yesterday we were slowly sailing under similar conditions when we caught an 1.5 m male Mahi-Mahi: 5 o’clock in the afternoon with a boat speed of only 3.5 knots–so much for the often claimed theory that fish bite at dusk or dawn when the lure is trolled fast.
It took us an hour to butcher the poor guy on the aft deck (we needed a hammer to get the knife through the backbone, yuck) and today I’ll spend some more hours of processing the steaks into boneless, skinless chunks that last about 1 week in the fridge (covered in soy sauce). We might manage to eat about half of the fish during the next week and the with the other half we’ll make glass preserves in the pressure cooker tonight.
