Yesterday evening I left the fishing hook dragging behind the boat, I know the girls don't like that because then we might get a fish during the night when two of us are asleep. But it was almost full moon and there is a saying that it's harder to catch fish two days before and two days after full moon, I took a chance. We had calculated that sometime during the night or early morning we would reach midway, it actually happened at 00.30 am, so I thought a Dorado would accompany the champagne nicely. One's most likely to catch fish right after sunrise or before sunset, because they hunt more actively when the water is cooler and that's the reason why I wanted to leave the hook out. Emelie has the morning watch, she woke me up at a quarter to nine telling me in an anxious voice that we had a fish. Happily I got up and tried to wake Sofia up as softly as possible, she's usually not very keen on killing fishes before she's had breakfast. I went out in the cockpit and began to haul in the fish, but when he was about ten meters from our stern I could see how he made a sideway movement and got loose. A bit sulky I checked that the hook was alright before I put it out again.

Sofia started to prepare breakfast while I decided to solve the problem with the Monitor ropes. The steering ropes was led from the wind vane through a double block to the wheel. Since the two ropes actually need different angles the double block had started to chafe the ropes badly. I had hoped we could get away with it, not having to change the ropes before we reached St. Lucia, but then Emelie noticed how bad the ropes looked and told me this morning so I had to take action. I found a spare block and led one of the ropes through it and the other one stayed in the double block, after some tampering with the placements of the blocks I managed to eliminate all chafing spots and connected Monitor to the wheel again. I was happy with today's work and went down to write today's post about how we almost caught a celebration fish.

But I hadn't written many sentences before Emelie once again told me that there was a fish on the hook. I went out and started to pull it in. Sofia got out the bag net and scooped up the fish. I asked her if we should put the hook out again or if the fish was enough for tonight's dinner (it's Sofia's dinner making day) She said put it out again, one more would be good. Sofia was still killing the first fish when the reel rattled, third time in the same day. I went back to the fishing rod and started to haul it in, but it wasn't easy. Then the fish jumped and it was huge, I thought we wouldn't be able to land it, but decided to let it stay out there for a while to get tired. Although it was far off you could see a yellow mass underneath the water. Time was flying, I had to send our position to ARC Rally Control. When I came back out Sofia had finished making the first fish ready for the fridge. I told her to take out the big fish hook that my father made for us before we left, you put it through the body of the fish to make it easier to get the fish aboard. Sofia looked sceptical and refused to also take out the cheap vodka that's bought as a mean to kill big fishes. When I managed to get the fish closer to the boat and it jumped in front of Sofia and Emelie they were rather quick to fetch the vodka. We got all excited and started discussing landing tactics. In the end Sofia agreed that the bag net was to small and put the hook through the fish's body and hauled it aboard. We all screamed as it slid down onto the cockpit floor. Then I took out the vodka and poured it into it's gills, I started jumping all over the place and we screamed even more. But in a short while he stopped moving and we just sat there awe-struck watching his beauty. Then we took out the folding rule and measured him, from head to tail he was 890 mm! Gigantic! When Sofia put the knife into the fish we realized why they say it's a bloody business to kill a Dorado, blood was all over the cockpit. Everybody (sailors) talk about making sushi out of newly caught fish, you put the raw fish in lemon juice for half an hour and then it's ready. Emelie has been in Panama and there they call it "cevice". I was a bit curious and talked the others into trying. It tasted lemon and nothing more, Emelie says we need spices to get it right and will try to fix a recipe for us. Anyway now we have enough fish for a few days, and tonight we can celebrate halfway in style. Halfway to the Caribbean! It feels great! /The Captain

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