Willie's Adventures Sailing and Fishing

Big red sn

 I have included a picture of my bunk which is surrounded by onions that attack me in the night when I get up in the dark to find the head.( The head is the toilet for the non-nautical amongst us.) Every time I bounce off them a little shower of onion flakes descends into my bed. Everything has an upside so I am hoping that smelling like an onion will keep the mosquitoes off me.

My bed

The one key item of equipment that we have yet to check out is the water maker which magically turns sea water into fresh water. We havn’t checked it yet because the water around Panama is too polluted. We will check it when we are about 100 miles offshore. We carry about 1000 litres of fresh water in a large tank but we are using 70 litres per day and are currently down to 700 litres. It could take about 10 more days to get to the Galapagos so we need the water maker to work to supplement our supplies. There is a move to cut down usage.

We left Isla Contadora today and sailed to Isla Canas. It was about a 25 mile day sail with light following winds. On the way we virtually stopped to pole out the genoa. One of the fishing lines was out about 100 meters behind the boat and we suspect that the lure sank virtually to the bottom which was only about 100 feet deep where we were. As we started up again, I suspect that the lure came up off the bottom and the biggest and best Red Snapper I have ever seen grabbed it. I think we were pretty lucky and it really was a fish of a lifetime. It was not my lure so I am 0-1 in the marigold glove versus hi tech fishing lures competition.

They are not called Red Snappers for nothing because as I was in the process of cleaning and filleting him, he snapped me, putting his teeth clean through my thumbnail and the fleshy part of the other side of my thumb. I had the last say, as the Sushi in the picture below where my thumb is bandaged in yellow was made with tasty red snapper as was our fish dinner tonight.