This isn’t our boat – just one that started with us – possibly Danica? After two weather delays, we finally left Santa Marta on a perfect day for sailing – sunny, 10-15 knot winds on the rear quarter – had the yellow spinnaker up for the start and that was it. Cobin did the honors of unveiling the sail when Joe gave the command and the massive yellow folds spun out and we were off.
As seems to happen any time we do our first leg of an ARC race or when my mother is on board, the conditions quickly accelerated to be beyond what we were expecting. We stopped grumbling under our breath about the weather delays and were grateful we hadn’t come out sooner. Wind and waves were high and most of us responded with doing what we usually do when conditions are bad – sleeping. I didn’t photograph myself but I looked much like everyone else. Joe, per his usual, pushed through any discomfort on his end, and sailed the boat beautifully.
We did drop the spinnaker and hauled up the main at some point, adding in a reef or two. Towards the end of the trip, things settled down and we had some beautiful flying-fish watching weather. A few even decided to join us on board. My mother was certain that no fish could fly that long and wanted to know if they sang like birds as well. Despite our best efforts, we could not convince this one to sing.
The biggest highlight of the trip – we finally caught a real fish without a bird attached! Our only semi-legitimate catch up to this point involved a bird that got caught on our lure. When Joe pulled the bird in to free it, it vomited up three partially-digested fish on our transom and then flew off. We took it as a thank-you gesture but, when the bird wasn’t looking, pushed its offering back into the sea. Despite our best efforts, until now, we have never caught any undigested fish (apart from the flying fish that regularly sacrifice themselves) on Charm.
We cooked this one up and had it for dinner. I asked Joe to let us dissect it for science class but he wisely suspected it might get a little messy. He saved us the head and part of the innards after cleaning and fileting it on the transom. We found a partially digested flying fish inside its stomach so maybe we can claim this was really two?