DAY 16 AT SEA

Distance covered so far: 1811 nautical miles
Last 24 hours: 111 nautical miles
To Martinique: 1492 nautical miles

We’re running out of fishing baits! When Max wanted to pull in his casted bait to remove seaweed, suddenly a large tuna jumped up and ripped off both anchovy-like baits including hooks. Now that Max and Papa’s bait were lost, only Daniel, Antonia and Sara are currently in the game. Max then devoted himself to the fishing rod and put everything back together. At the same time, I reinstalled the pulley of the Genoa furling line, as it was still astonishingly laying on deck and had not dropped into the water. Then the garbage was sorted, washed and stowed in the anchor locker. When there was more wind during the day, we hoisted the mainsail. We are still making an average of less than 5.5 knots because the wind keeps dying down. When the sails started to flap we let the engine run again for 2.5 hours to recharge our batteries. Unfortunately, our starter battery was so deeply discharged that it no longer stores energy and we are dependent on our house battery. So the broken battery is now turned off until we have found replacement in the Caribbean. However, due to the strong sunlight, the house battery recharges itself quite well during the day. Shortly before we wanted to set the Genoa again for the night, Papa brought the fishing rod in when a large tuna caught Daniel’s lure, which was slithering on the surface, and hung on the line. With a lot of muscle power and conviction, Papa won the fight and with a big hook we were able to pull the biggest fish on board so far. Gutting the big fish took Papa almost an hour! Some of the tender fillets were then fried immediately with potatoes. We will eat the rest in the next few days. What a catch! The night was very calm and we had minimal wind to sail a bit closer to our destination. Unfortunately my new cell phone stoppe working and the problem could not be solved. So instead of audio books and podcasts, it is up to me to find other activities, especially for the night watches.