Yesterday morning we left Bimini and started sailing in conditions that really could only be called “idyllic.” Winds were light, but more than enough to keep the boat moving at 5 knots. Sunny. Calm seas. Perfect temperatures. Pretty much reminding us exactly why we love to travel this way.

Just north of the island, the wind faded a bit, and we started to slow down. At the same time on the sonar I noticed some large lumps and holes 600 feet under the boat, with a cloud of fish suspended above them. I promised Karen I would stop JUST long enough to catch ONE fish for dinner. I have to be a bit selective at the beginning of a voyage. Since our freezers are full with purchased provisions, there isn’t a lot of room left for fish, but this looked like prime territory for deep water snapper, absolutely delicious fish.

I positioned the boat, and set up a drift across the area that looked interesting, and rigged up with a 300 gram vertical jig, and sent the lure off into the depths.

Reaching the bottom in these depths can take a while, but eventually the lure stopped falling, and I tensioned up on the line. Hmmm…. That’s odd… Oh! I’m bit! Fish on! I was expecting a queen snapper, but this was a blackfin tuna. It was surely the shortest fishing stop I have ever had! We cleaned him, and squeezed most of him into the freezer, saving out a some to make tuna poke for dinner. Fresh! Tasty!

The rest of our 36 hour trip was about evenly divided between motoring in nearly none existent winds , and a “boisterous” sail into North Eleuthera where we anchored in a sheltered harbor to wait out tonight’s frontal passage.

There is ONE exception to the full freezer rule: Karen has stated she will ALWAYS find a way to put away wahoo fillets. So whenever conditions allow we are dragging lines for these large torpedoes of the sea with large lures (10+ inches long). Just as we were getting ready to pull our lines in for the evening, we hooked ANOTHER Blackfin tuna. A really ambitious little blackfin, attacking a lure that was probably 1/3 of his body length! Not wahoo, but fresh tuna is a very close second, so we squeezed him into the freezer too.