Sailing to Micronesia

We are on day 4 of our passage from the Solomon Islands to Micronesia. We are hoping to make landfall in Pohnpei, but we are sailing close hauled (as close to the wind as a sailboat can sail) now, and if the wind shifts any the wrong way we will need to bear off and head to Truk instead. It's 850 miles to Pohnpei and a bit longer to Truk. We have about 520 miles to go still to Pohnpei. All is well on board but it's getting hot again as we approach the equator.

We left on Christmas morning, from tiny Sikopo island which is in the passage between Choiseil and Santa Isabella islands. Sikopo is uninhabited and we spent a couple nights there waiting for the right weather for departing. On Christmas eve we went fishing in the dinghy and caught two barracudas, one of which was enormous! We didn't get to measure it, but it was at least 4 feet long. Jeff fought it from the dinghy for about 45 minutes as we motored slowly back to the sailboat. Then Fred tried to jump onto the sailboat from the dingy as we motored past still fighting the fish. Unfortunately I was driving the dinghy at the time and did not quite understand this was the plan, so we didn't quite make it, but he was of out of the water pretty quick and grabbed the gaff and was able to gaff the fish from the sailboat as we made another close pass in the dinghy. It was pretty exciting! We will post some pics of the monstrous creature as soon as we get to the next internet connection.

We were all excited to try eating the barracuda. None of us had ever had any before because you can't eat it anywhere ciguaterra is present because it will give you fish poisoning. However, there is no ciguaterra in the Solomon Islands, and we'd heard it was delicious - and after trying it we agree! Jeff pan fried some iwth a lime beurre blanc for Christmas Eve lunch and then served some battered with tartar sauce on the side for Christmas lunch. Yum yum yum.