Last night we were still slowly bouncing along, with flogging sails, but at least sailing. Just before sunrise this morning the long awaited wind finally set in, the skies cleared up and we were sailing briskly with 6 knots when a 1.5 m mahi-mahi bit the lure… We hardly managed to get the big guy up on our high aft deck. We always use small lures and wish for medium-sized fish because such a big animal is hard to kill, hard to cut into pieces and takes ages to process into fish preserves.
Anyway, after a few hours hard work the pressure cooker is on the stove (a few more fillings will be needed) and we’ll have jars for the next few weeks (or months). Of course the fridge is also full with as much as we three can mangage within a week.
The chartplotter estimates that we’ll reach Nengonengo at 2 o’clock in the morning, so we’ll see if we can anchor for a few hours off a little motu that we’ll reach in the afternoon. First it would be good to kill a few hours and second it looks like an interesting place, no village, just a few motus with coconut plantations (the grid is clearly visible on sat pics) and the rest could be bird motus.
If we can manage to anchor there we’ll set out again in the evening for a nightsail to Nengonengo, if not we’ll reef down and slowly sail on in order to arrive with first light.
Tomorrow morning the real adventure will begin: anchoring off the pass, sounding out the uncharted pass and hopefully getting Pitufa in. Keep your fingers crossed for us!
