Saturday, March 7, 2015

Bagged 3 Mahi-Mahi en-route to Long Island

Today we decided to head over to the north end of Long Island in preparation for island hopping further south.  The problem is that starting this Tuesday wind from the east will be up over 25 knots for about a week, so wherever we are is where we'll be for awhile.  So its hard making the decision to leave Georgetown when we know wind like this will be hitting us soon.  When you're in Georgetown, you get comfortable - it has everything you need: American television (all four major stations!!), grocery stores, internet, and safety in numbers.  And after waiting for our anemometer (wind instrument) to come back from Raymarine for over a month now, fear begins to creep in because beyond Georgetown, you are kind of on your own.  Do we leave? Or do we stay?  

But today, I made the decision to go ahead and set sail for Calabash Bay on Long Island - the wind was minimal and the waves were non-existant as the waters west of Long Island are still protected from the Atlantic Ocean - seemed like a good idea to peak out and get a little salty.  And sails like this can be very productive - you get to dump your tanks and we make water the whole way replenishing our diminished supply as we're not comfortable making water in Elizabeth Harbor.  We also let out both fishing poles - a couple of Penn's we picked up at a Key West pawn shop.  And when you travel in 2000 feet of water you might just snag a Mahi or two.  

TWO fish ON!!!
We're perfecting the "Swing-to-the-Cockpit" maneuver 
And that's what happened - we hadn't had them out but about an hour when the first monster Mahi hit.  And unfortunately for us, once again, the big one got away - we have not seemed to master the art of getting these bad boys into the safety of the cockpit before they shake that lure right out of their mouth.  Major bummer!  We devise another plan and put both poles back out again.  Lucky for us, there are more Mahi in these waters and within about another hour, we got another hit - a baby, but still a nice one.  We can at least look forward to a nice Mahi dinner - we've been redeemed a little.  


Gorgeous!


Happy Times!

But the real excitement came after about another hour, the small Penn reel got a hit and Justin ran to it to pull it in and Brandon ran to the other reel to bring it in so Justin wouldn't get tangled in it.  But as soon as Brandon started to reel, his lure was also hit - now we had TWO FISH ON!!!  For some reason, both fish went to port and Brandon found himself making his way around the solar rack with a big Mahi on (he knew what it was because it kept jumping out of the water.)  Lucky for us, we were able to finally get big Mahi inside the cockpit before they both shook their lures and we have finally been redeemed from the two big ones that got away!


The baby that we caught after the big one got away


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