Distance sailed in last 24 hours: 120 nm
Distance to Honokohau, Hawaii: 130 nm
Latitude: 18 42.464 N
Longitude: 154 29.075 W
COG: 267M
SOG: 5.2 kts under sail
Wind: 8 kts NE
Seas: 2 ft ENE swell, .5 ft wind ripples
Weather: 50% Cloud Cover
Barometric Pressure: 1014.8, steady
Sea Temperature: 80 F
Today dawned with a lightly freshening wind and the prospect of arriving at the marina in under 24 hours. To say we're excited would be putting it mildly. Try as we might, we still cannot see the island of Hawaii some 40 miles distant at it's closest point.
Yesterday, there was almost no wind, so right after sending the update email, we fired up our main engine and began motorsailing. It was slow going, but at least we were making some progress. The light and variable conditions persisted throughout the day and night, and we were able to get in a few loads of laundry without the washing machine complaining about being tilted one way and the other. Around dawn the wind freshened and moved forward to the beam, giving us a knot of additional boatspeed.
Yesterday was a fairly quiet day aboard Samadhi. We're now doing fewer maintenance tasks in favor of taking care of them from the comfort of a mooring. This leaves us more opportunity to relax and spend time together. It also gives Kelly and Phillip more time for catching up on sleep! The seas continued in their near flat state, and we had sun throughout the day. Rain squalls have ceased to darken the skies, and in the still air, it got pretty warm down below decks.
The last of Alexander's excellent shortbread cookies are consumed. It's now back to Kinder eggs and Oreos for the remainder of our journey. Nicholas is looking forward to having some biscuit cookies with La Lechera (sweetened condensed milk) for a change.
In an effort to consume the last of our ground beef, Phillip prepared "meat cake" for dinner. Just as we were putting it in the oven, the clicker on one of the fishing reels started singing, and Nicholas was yelling "FISH!!!" before you could blink (his reaction time for this can be measured in microseconds). Up on deck, Phillip took the rod, the same one that hooked the billfish we lost a few days ago, while Kelly stopped the boat and Nicholas reeled in the second vacant line. Alexander was there to provide support and be a general gofer in case any of us needed something. The fish struck the line on the port quarter, the one which had only the spectra backing attached to a 10" chugger with rainbow-colored skirt rigged with double 8/0 hooks--a doppelgänger for the one that interested a certain sailfish north of the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica.
Once the boat was stopped, Kelly grabbed our fish fighting belt and strapped it around Phillip's hips. The fish was running wildly, and Phillip was determined to get this one aboard. As she got nearer the boat, she sounded, straight down. Yes, after that little move, we were almost positive that there was a tuna of some variety on the business end of the line. Phillip fought the powerful fish for another ten minutes or so before the fish surrendered. Sure enough, we saw the striped body of a beautiful skipjack tuna. Kelly took the rod while Phillip gaffed the fish and brought her over the lifelines. On deck, the skipjack put up very little resistance despite her size. None of us were able to lift her without using both hands. She must have weighed in at 60 pounds or more. We didn't know that Skipjack grew so large, this one was as large or larger than the yellowfin we caught earlier in our passage. Smaller skipjack are commonly used for live bait for marlin and other billfish
. We wonder what could you catch with a 60 pound baitfish...
After a few photos, Phillip was able to start processing her without much trouble. Nicholas helped his father clean the fish while Kelly made sure the meat cake was cooking and Alexander played down below. Like billfish, skipjack tuna have a slit where they can retract their dorsal fin. We discovered this after we couldn't find it anymore and went searching. The armor plating on this skipjack's back was commensurately more tenacious then the previous smaller specimens we've landed. It took a full fifteen minutes to get through the first section. Before long though, Phillip had the four fillets (tuna logs) off the football-shaped body and downstairs to complete the processing--more than 30 pounds of boneless tuna. It should be noted that at no time during this process did anyone slice open his or her knee.
For dinner, we forwent the meat cake in favor of fresh sashimi over the last of our sushi rice. We managed to consume a little more than a eighth of the processed "tuna logs". The boys can each eat about twice as much sashimi as a hungry adult. We have no idea where it all goes. The scraps and cuttings from the fillets made an incredibly flavorful stock that we're looking forward to using in a fish soup. For breakfast this morning, we feasted on the enormous roe sautéed in bacon drippings and finished with a maple and lime reduction sauce. The recipe came from a cookbook written by another cruiser who is a French-trained chef.
We've got the lines out again this morning. Who knows? Maybe we'll get lucky again today...
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