Greetings from the Coral Sea!
We finally broke our fishing curse today with the landing of a small mahi-mahi this afternoon. Yea, fish for dinner! There seems to be a direct relationship between pulling some frozen chicken breasts out of the freezer and catching fish. The fish wins and the chuk will have to wait for its turn on the barbie till tomorrow.
While the sea Gods have been blessing us with a gentle ride, Aeolus, the Wind God, has been conspicuously absent on this passage. The five-to-ten knot breeze we had yesterday faded last evening and we have had light and variable winds, below three knots all day. This is great for fishing, cooking and sleeping, but lousy for sailing. The cast iron jib is humming away and has been pushing us along at about 7.5 knots all day.
Mostly clear skies and a nearly full moon have made the night watches a breeze. There is nearly enough reflected light to read without the lights on at night. Not that there has been much to see on this passage. Most of the sea birds left us near Lord Howe. The only other thing we’ve seen so far is a couple of whale spouts on the horizon.
In our first 24 hours after departing Lord Howe, we made 200 miles toward Noumea. As of 1500 hours (Noumea time) we were at 25 deg. 18 min. South by 162 deg. 10 min. East. or roughly 430 miles southwest of New Caledonia.
The weather gurus think that we will get a bit of wind starting tomorrow. We hope so as we may be a bit close on diesel to motorsail the entire trip. We’ll see.