Invisible Monster Fish

Author: Mark
Date: Apr 24, 4am MST
Location: 07 16.57S --- 114 05.20W
Conditions: 10-12kts @ 180T, 288 COG, 5.5kts SOG, 2.5m swell with 10s period

Yesterday was the best day yet. We are now flying the Parasailor spinnaker and made some course adjustments. The boat is settled and everyone is having a good time.

I cleaned and organized all the fishing lures with help from Elizabeth. We soaked the rusted hooks in acid, sharpened all the lures and organized the boxes. It was great and Elizabeth was a big help. She LOVES to fish, and is always looking at lures and wanting to try new stuff. Its great to watch her get excited about fishing! :-)

We landed two small tuna yesterday, and lost two other large fish. Overall we are doing fairly well on the fishing. My biggest complaint has been the invisible monster fish. We have lost four good lures that have snapped off on strike. We even had a steel leader get snapped almost instantly from a hit. Whatever the heck is ravaging our lures is a monster. It's not just our boat either, as most of the other boats have had their lures snapped off. I'm going to change our leaders to 100lb wire, and see what happens!

Dinner last night was pizza and a documentary. We are currently watching the BBC series South Pacific. If you haven't seen it, I recommend this series. Like anything with the BBC it's well done and the videography is outstanding. Check it out when you get a chance.

We use PredictWind onaboard to forecast our route based on polars, current and wind conditions. It's excellent. We can email our current position, and within minutes receive a detailed plan based on four weather models. The iPad app is excellent and overall we have been very pleased with this service.

In addition, we have help from my long time business partner and friend Bryan Suthard in Hawaii. He is keeping us posted on the updated current models from TideTech and is our onshore help for anything else.

Based on our position yesterday, our routing is now taking us on a heading of 286M to get ourselves up to about 5.30N before slinging down on an arc to Fatu Hiva. This will give us a better angle on the wind for the final leg of our journey. Our buddy boat Moana Roa is also doing this similar route, while others are still reaching south. We will see how this pans out in the end. It's ever changing based on new forecast models.

Given this change in course, we are flying the Parasailor spinnaker and are almost on a dead run with waves and swell directly behind Field Trip. Wow. We hardly even know the boat is moving even when we are zipping along at 7-8 kts. This is our most comfortable point of sail. We've been able to maintain about 40-45% of true wind boat speed (in 12 kts of breeze we will sail about 5.5kts). Not too bad. The bonus is the boat is virtually silent and everyone is very comfortable.

When we make our course change in a day or two we will be sailing on a broad reach with some of the swell back to our beam. Not terrible, but still rolly. At this point of sail we will be a lot closer to 50% of true wind speed - flying the main and screecher.

We have a lot to do - we've designated today 'Battle of the Invisible Monster Fish'. Stay tuned!!!