February 16, 2017 Clarence Town, Long Island

Since neither of us slept well, we decided to take off early this morning.  We left the anchorage at 7:00am.  The boat was still really rocking.  Dave was splashed a few times retrieving the anchor.  One wave even hit my glasses at the helm.   We had oatmeal and hard boiled eggs in the cockpit for breakfast after we took off.

And the waves kept coming all day

We had to round the northern end of the island and head down the east side to get to Clarence town.  It is the only safe harbor on that side of the island.  We visited Long Island last year with our friends, Joe and Erin.  So it was fun to see the island again and remember all the fun we had with them. 

I laid down mid morning for a nap.  I got up about 11:30 and made lunch for us.  We were almost finished with our lunch when we had 2 fish on the line.  We brought in 2 mahi that were about 3 feet long.  WOO HOO!!  We were about 8 miles off shore in water about 3000 feet deep.  That’s just crazy.  The wind was pretty steady in the low 20k range with gusts to 25.  So that made it a little more challenging to bring in the fish, or to take pictures.

amazing how they lose their pretty green color so fast

hard to find a good place to clean fish on a sailboat

We made it to Clarence town by 2:15.  We anchored, checked it with our dinghy, then reset the anchor, and checked it again.  There are 3 old cables in this anchorage.  We were very close to one the first time we anchored.  And with the way the wind was going to change tonight, we were afraid we would be hooked on it in the morning. 

Back at the boat, Dave started cleaning fish and I started defrosting the freezer.  We needed to make more room for our catch. 

Dave wants to make a fish stew using the heads

I needed a few things out of our bilge.  And Dave has been wanting to check the water in the 2 large membranes for our water maker.  So we tore apart the salon area to accomplish both of those tasks.  The water maker company had told Dave to check the water in each membrane to be sure they were functioning correctly.  They remove the salt and other solids from the water.  We have been getting higher than normal readings on our water clarity.  He couldn’t get water out of either one.  He was pretty tired, so we just put everything back, and he’ll deal with it another day.  He thinks he’ll have to test it while the water maker is running.  Probably will turn out better by putting it off, that seems to be his luck.  We also found a small amount of yellow liquid in the bilge, partially diesel fuel.  Will have to track that down, eventually. 

digging in the bilge

By now, Dave was pretty exhausted.  Early to bed for him, but here I am catching up on my blog before we lose wifi.