Leaving Long Island at 2am!

Rowan didn't want to set an alarm as he wakes up early naturally, so I leapt out of bed when I woke up at 2:45 am and found Rowan still fast asleep. It didn't take us long to get galvanised and by the light of the moon in the pitch dark we got the anchor up and navigated our way through the shallows and reef out to sea. Thank god it all went smoothly. We had a huge Ocean liner crossing our path, which looked like an enormous lit up Christmas tree. I made Rowan a very welcome cup of tea and went back to bed so I could do the next shift. As we were going straight into the wind we had to motor. Sadly this was our only option, with East winds predicted for the next 10 days before another front arrives. This is why we left early when the sea is calmer. We made very good headway even though the swell was enormous, and the noise of the boat crashing down the other side was pretty dramatic.

Miles and miles of blue!

By the time I woke up we could just see Rum Cay where we had been with Phoeb's and Sam. I came upstairs to hear the line clicking out on Rowan's fishing rod, I asked if he had caught a fish. He said he couldn't have as he had only just put it out. The next minute this huge mahi mahi was leaping out of the water and we had it on the line. All a little confusing at first as the rod line was clicking out so he reeled it in only to discover it was caught on the bungee trawl line which had the fish on it. We slowed right down and after not much of a fight R was able to get it in and used the gaff effectively without me having to use half a bottle of tequila. The poor thing had got both hooks stuck in him, one in the mouth and one in the body, they are amazingly beautiful fish, yellowy green with blue markings. There was no escaping this time, we were determined too, especially as R and I were salivating at the thought of fresh sashimi again! Even in all the bounce of the waves Rowan managed to successfully fillet it there and then without the need for a single plaster this time. Plenty of fish zip locked in the freezer and enough for sashimi for lunch and more for supper.

Lines away we then turned back to sailing as we could now head South and use the East wind which was hopefully going to blow a little further north in the afternoon and help us sail even further. Motors off we had hours and hours of sailing south, with a very happy grin on Mr G's face.

After a rather hairy time with the pan on, in the big waves we had a delicious bit of butter fried fish for supper, absolutely scrummy. The wind picked up a bit and it was quite bangy, so we decided to put a reef in the sail (to reduce it's size- for you non yachtie lot), terrifying for me to see Rowan head up the boat at night, but we had our very sophisticated life jackets on and harness clips. Plus we have our headphone walky talky system on, so we can hear each other, which is very reassuring. I have to say the headsets have been a genius result of all Rowan's research. It makes anchoring so much less stressful! All his reading up, certainly has paid off ........ while I was still sulking thinking I'm not sure about this sailing malarkey at all.

Rowan went off to bed early, so I was on duty until midnight. Quite eery being out in the big ocean in the dark with just the wind in our sails pushing us South at about an average of 5.5 knots, with 1 knot of current against us. I just stay in the cabin area as we are on auto pilot. We have the radar on with an alarm if anything comes within a 3 mile radius, and I have the chart showing us the autopilot route. I just have to sit up about every 15 mins, check out the window and look at the charts. We did come across quite a few tankers crossing our path. Quite fun looking them up on the chart and seeing how big they are, what speed they are doing and where they are from (that is if they have filled in all the info correctly). Luckily I had my newspapers down loaded and a couple of Sudoku's to do. Rowan took over at midnight and decided we had to put the motors on as with the reef in the sail we were drifting off course with the current. I was back on at 3am for the next watch. With a cup of tea I had a very good catch up of all the Saturday Time's magazines and the latest on the Corona Virus. The news gets more and more dramatic......stock markets crashing, countries going under lockdown, airlines going bust. It feels like another world to us out here on the ocean.