Thursday, 10 November 2011

10th November, 2011

Start Loc: Arlington Reef (16o 41.25'S, 146o 05.32'E)
Narrative: We had a lazy start to the day, including croissants for breakfast, and eventually raised the anchor at 10:45am. After motoring our way out of the coral we set full head sail in a 12kt ESE breeze, and motor sailed west on a training run at 5kts boat speed. We had both deep swimming lures out the back, and just after 11:00am we got a strike on one (not the one we found yesterday). We managed to land this one, and we were quite happy with our 72cm, 4.1kg tuna. The remaining fusilier is now officially bait. We continued sailing (without the lures) under full sail on a broad reach with Heather on the helm while I filleted the tuna.
At about 12:15pm, we put the sails away and under motor picked our way through the coral at Vlassoff Cay. We anchored over sand in 5m of water at 12:40pm, with coral all around us. The water is spectacularly clear, so after lunch we took the dinghy ashore to the cay and had a swim, followed by snorkeling the reef off the back of the boat.
At 15:38pm, before the sun got too low to see the coral, we raised the anchor and moved 500m or so to a public mooring buoy for the night. We decided we will go to Michaelmas Cay tomorrow and spend the day and night there.
End Loc: Vlassoff Cay (16o 39.00'S, 145o 59.35'E)
Distance run: 7nm (cumulative: 1644nm)
Engine hours: 1 hr, 44 min (cumulative: 5 hr, 28 min)