Position @ 0600: 27 deg 28.15 min North, 91 deg 9.22 min West
We had light breeze from the east northeast on Day 3. Our XM weather report had northeast breeze to the east of us, and east breeze to the south of us. When you want to go east on a sailboat, east breeze is bad. So we beat into the wind on on port tack, trying to get far enough east to take advantage of the northeast breeze. We didn’t know it at the time, but we would be beating for the next four days.
Everyone pretty much recovered from being queasy, and the calm seas allowed us to cook nice meals and get the boat cleaned up. Spirits were high. We were all still talking.
The trip would not be complete without a fish story. Walter dropped a squid shaped lure in the water around 4:30 pm. 2 minutes later we heard the distinctive zhzhzhzhzhzhzhz of a spinning reel and watched as a fish drained about 100 feet of line off the reel in a few seconds. Sam later revealed he had seen a fin aproaching the lure. After Walter adjusted the drag on the reel and did his best to set the hook, we watched a 6 foot marlin do a movie perfect tail walk across the water for 30 feet or more. After a few more minutes of struggling, the marlin shook the hook loose and we never saw him again. We think maybe the marlin was following the boat and got interested in the lure just as soon as Walter dropped it in the water.
The marlin was the first and last fish we saw the entire trip, even though Walter trailed the lure on several other occasions.
We were still seeing rigs on day 3. One of the consequences of our easterly course was that we would have to dodge rigs until we got south of New Orleans. About 150 miles south of New Orleans, the water depth goes from 4000 feet to 7000 feet. 7000 feet is pushing it for Gulf Coast drilling rigs, we only saw a few rigs after the water depth changed.
we never saw much bioluminescence. Just a few feet on the transom. We’ve seen more bioluminescence in Galveston Bay.
The stars on the other hand… I’ve read plenty about the stars offshore. But I was not prepared for this. There are literally 10 times as many stars in the sky as what you can see from near Houston. Too many to count. Clouds of stars. They light up the sky. And the meteors. Freaky. At one point, Walter laid back in the cockpit and started counting shooting stars. He lost count after about 30 seconds. And you can actually see satellites. Especially near sunrise on a dark night. The satellites reflect the light from the rising sun. They track across the entire night sky in about 20 seconds.
