Diary for Sailng on Windwanderer.


Wednesday 14th August 2013

2013-08-14

Wednesday 14th August 2013

Day 8

12.30am my watch.

Well As bone tired as I was I could not sleep, it felt like I just tossed and turned,
Its  rough again, and this makes it that much harder to sleep.

As I lay here for a bit, deciding should I just give up,  I  glance over to The Captain and he was sound asleep, far out.

So I woke him up as he was doing such a great watch... Haha. Not!, and made him lay down.
The problem is, he does not allow himself to sleep through the day, so he is so tired at night and is just not catching up on his sleep at all, that sure is going to change, if I have any say it. 

I decided to let him sleep as long as possible.
At around 5am, I'm starting to see things, serious, I was so tired I just had to wake him up.
At least he managed to get a good chunk of sleep this time, now it's my time to try and catch up, it really takes it out of you, I tell you.

Last night before The Captain went to sleep, I ducked down and had a very quick shower, why quick?.
Well  other than they are always quick, ,,,haha our water maker has stopped working.

Yeap once again, at the moment we have four things broken, the mizzen sail, just the rope on that one, a shackle that has broken on the main sail, just a minor repair, the water maker, which we have found out its an electrical thingy, one of the wires, and our new beaut winchrite, oh actually one more the AIS, this is working but it's flashing a red error message that needs looking into some more, as well.

The winchrite, is driving us crazy, if you remember, we got this at the Annapolis boat show, and it was quite expensive, what it does is, it's a hand held device that you hook into the winches and it turns them into electric winches, when it works its great, it just break down all the time.

This is the second one we have had replaced with also a few times them having to send us new parts, the new one was one of the things we were waiting in Panama for.
So this has not lasted less than a week.

Now getting back to my shower, after I had a quick shower I was coming up into the cockpit, when I looked up and saw a very small boat coming towards us with three guys in it.
I yelled to The Captain, as I grabbed the mace spray, yeah I know I may go a bit overboard, but with all the pirate stories going through your head you just never know, and we are out in the middle of the ocean, like 150nm from land.

As they get closer they start waving things in the air and there is a lot of arm action happening.
I'm  looking thinking do they have guns, should I go back for the tasers, speargun and flare guns, and what the hell are they doing out here in such a little boat.

We watch for awhile, am sure neither of us were breathing, we were getting major concerned, they came closer still and I could make out what was happening, they were holding up fishing lines and trying to tell us to go behind them.

I told The Captain, he was very unsure, but we turned the boat around and headed back around them, I actually saw one of them cutting a few lines so I guess we were already over some.

We eventually got around behind them and with a wave of thanks from both boats we settled back down again, although I did watch them behind us for a long time, this was actually happening right on nightfall which is crazy, as we would have no hope at all if it was pitch black, we would never see them at all.

So the theory was, that they were guarding the lines and must of had a mother boat out here somewhere, we checked the radar and yeap sure enough about 20nm away was a bigger boat.

So that pirate boat shot down we settled in for the night.

9pm my watch

Well what an eventful day.
I did a lot of cooking, as the sea was not too bad, well at first anyway.
By around mid afternoon, it was bad, rough seas, big winds, big wave, I hate it like this.

I really can't cope, it just scares me so much, the best thing I can do is, just lay down and sleep.
I had tried to get The Captain to have a sleep with no luck at all, in the end I just had to.

The Captain woke me, some time later, with an excited voice, telling me I have a fish on the line.

Well this sure got me up and running.
He had already reeled it right to the back of the boat, I was shocked that I never heard a thing.

Yeap it was another mahi mahi, and just as big as the other one that got away.

We had made a plan from the last escapee, that we would lift the rod down this time, so it was at a better angle.

The problem is, it's such a heavy rod and reel, that I have a hard time lifting the thing.
I usually just leave it in the rod holder, and reel it in that way.

The Captain, lifts it out of the holder, and I grab the net, and lean over, I was so determined, that this guy was not getting away, that I wedged myself, in between the spare dingy motor and the BBQ, as we were rocking and rolling everywhere, which has resulted in some major sore bruised ribs.

Anyway with some team work happening here,  he brings it in closer and I scoop it in the net, yeap we had ourselves a fine specimen.

Now this thing is big, and flapping all around the place, we had read that if you pour a little alcohol into their gills, they die straight away.

I race down pick up a bottle of Pims, yeah not our choice of drink, and race back up.

Now this was hard going with a boat going all over the place, and a fish flapping everywhere, The Captain trying his best to keep the thing still, and me pouring it a nice alcoholic drink.
Let me tell you it's body got covered in it, Captain Neptune had a nice drop or too, The Captains toes caught some and my legs as well, did we get any in the gills?.... Nope hahah   

Ok plan B, The Captain, lifts it up by it tail and I try again, yay success right in the gills, it instantly stop moving, says a lot about alcohol hey, if I had to drink that stuff, I think It would have the same affect on me too, we did try it once and its not real good.
We may just have enough to use on one more fish....it was almost a full bottle... :-/

After we argued on whose fish it really was, we settled on both, it was a team work, so I said we have to be a team and clean it...haha

I managed to get The Captain to slow down the boat some, which is a really major thing with him, also we were in a bit of a rush to get to Ecuador, as a friend of his, had organised, for us to meet up with a pilot at around 7am in the morning at the entrance to where we need to go in, apparently it's quite shallow.

I can see the logic in this, but trying to set a deadline when you are sailing is almost impossible, there was a few tense moments between The Captain and crew, when the boat was heeling over so far and we were being thrown around so bad with water pouring in from a porthole and such, but we managed to comprise and all was ok again.

So getting back to our Fish, we decided to just fillet it and be done with it, now my filleting skills are right up there with my fishing skills, they both suck.
But somehow we managed to get it done, with way less fish for the size of that sucker.
What should of been maybe easy four meals, is down to about two...haha
We just need to catch more fish so I can practice more.

After that disaster, I go down to have a shower, and come back up to The Captain once again fighting with the boat...hahah you thought I was going to say another fish.

No the boat this time and there are lights everywhere, we can only imagine they were fishing vessels.

The Captain finally has it where he wants it and settles in for a sleep, I'm thinking this is gonna be one crazy watch as these small boats were really not showing up so well on the radar, so I was standing up almost the whole time with my head hanging out the window, trying to work out where they all were.
Was not a pleasant watch.

Well tomorrow is another day.