Miles traveled Day 16: 141
Miles traveled to date: 2,119
Miles to Hiva Oa: 1,032
As soon as I sent the mail yesterday I came back into the cockpit and Rob said “should we drop the pole and put up the staysail?”. So we went forward and the process that usually takes 5 minutes took 20, but then it was done and the staysail was up and the rolling lessened pretty quick. Today the wind has eased finally, as it’s forecast to continue doing, and turned more easterly (which is right behind us).
We don’t want to sail too far south because we’ve heard people report northeasterly winds as they approach the Marquesas, and that’s exactly what Hello World has right now. So they’re beating into 20 knots of wind their last two days to get back north and make landfall. Because we want to stay high and put out our jib we’re going to set the sails wing on wing, which means the mainsail is out on one side of the boat and the jib is on a pole on the other side and the wind is directly behind us. That also puts the waves directly behind us which makes us roll a little less, but with both sails nearly perpendicular to the boat we have nothing to dampen the roll when we do. So I think it’s a wash – we’re going to roll no matter what we do!
Today’s fishing report is a good one. After catching another typical 2 meal dorado we put the lure back in to see if there was a second one close by. In about 10 minutes I called “fish on” again and Rob started pulling in the line, but there was no bright yellow dorado on the end this time. As it got closer we recognized the narrow shape and striped coloring of a wahoo! After he got done cleaning both fish he asked which I wanted for dinner and I thought we should have a taste test. So he pan fried two small mahi fillets and four small wahoo steaks.
I don’t think there’s enough difference taste-wise between the two to call a winner or loser. The wahoo is much denser and drier and the mahi is much more delicate and a little oilier. I’d call it a wash, but a fun experiment nonetheless. In Maya’s opinion the raw meat off the wahoo won paws down.
Teresa
