I don’t usually post so close to my last one but today was a special day. After my last post that talked about one of our worst days here in the Bahamas, I thought it would be nice to post about an amazing day!!
We left New Bight early this morning (Tuesday) – around 7:30am. It took a bit of time to get our fortress anchor on deck (it took both of us!!) and to secure it to our safety lines. Once it was up and secured, we motored about 1 hour until we were out of the Bight of Cat Island. The wind was predicted to be from the south east (a good direction) with about 10 – 15 knots of wind. Well, the direction was good but we didn’t see that much wind all day. We were able to motor sail with our jib!
It was a very nice trip across the sound to Rudder Cut Cay (in the Exumas). The jib did a good job of moving us forward while adding a bit of stability against the waves. The sun was out and it was a nice day to travel back to the Exumas.
Whenever we travel across deep waters – the Exuma Sound is 2000ft plus deep – we like to put our fishing line out. This is called trolling – the fishing line just drags out behind you. Mark is the captain of fishing and he looks after the whole process. Today, we started fishing as soon as we left the Bight and continued most of the way across the sound. Mark diligently changed the lures he was using every 30 minutes or so. At one point we talked about turning into the wind “if” we caught a fish because we had a sail up and waves rolling us from the stern. In my head I thought okay I’ll turn into the wind – but how far and for how long….I left those questions for later – didn’t want to jinx things.
We were about 5 nm from Rudder Cut (the entrance off of the sound) when the fishing line went off (with lure # 5 or 6). We turned into the wind which slowed us down and stopped us from rolling side to side. Mark worked for a good 15 minutes reeling in the fish he just caught. You never know what you’re catching but as the fish got closer, we could tell it was a big Mahi!! This was only the second mahi we have caught- it’s very cool.
So tonight we had fresh fish for dinner!! This certainly makes up for the little problems we had in New Bight and makes us super happy we are back in the Exumas!
Crimson Kathryn and her crew 