Sunday, July 16, 2023 Amedroz Island

The promised thunderstorms did not come again yesterday. I am not complaining, but all these forecasts of possible storms and hail do influence the decisions we make. It did sprinkle around 3:00 AM so I had to close the hatch. I saw all these specks on the overhead hatch when I woke up and looked through it this morning. They did not look like rain drops. It turns out that they were bugs - thousands of bugs! Annie is covered in tiny little bugs and mayflies. Yuck! We had planned to wash her anyway today. I feel sorry for Peter who had his fly bridge deck spotless last night. Voyager is a big boat to clean.

I did get to see a loon today. Loons are my favorite bird,. I love their call. I seldom can get a great picture of one. After I shot this picture a second one appeared but they were gone faster than I could react. They were pretty far away. I take seeing loons as a good omen for the rest of this voyage. 

After I posted the blog I invited Peter over for a cappuccino. He said he would come, but had to wash a million bugs off Voyager first, while the generator was running. I thought that a good idea, so I did the same thing. 

I made a super special cappuccino for Peter, with whipped cream and chocolate syrup. He had all his fishing equipment with him so I gathered mine and we shoved off once our coffee and cinnamon rolls were done. We went to the right spot which was a little island across from us. I caught the first fish on my second cast. Peter hauled in 4 more in rapid succession. We stopped fishing when we had 6 in the bucket. We were totally unaccustomed to this success, but certainly enjoying it. 

We cleaned them on Annie's swim platform. Peter and I have gotten by the "this is nasty" mindset when cleaning fish to instead feeling challenged to do a better job of filleting. We are not really good at it so more meat than we wish gets wasted. We were not sure we had enough fish for a big dinner so we went out again later and caught the two biggest fish of the day. 15" was the largest bass. Annie's swim platform is 3' wide so you can just imagine how big those fish are. 

Peter had never used the grill on Voyager and said the first time he used it he wanted it to be for grilling fish. Today was the day. Marianna cooked the fish on the grill and they were delicious. We actually had more than we could eat. Big Jim is keeping track of our cost per fish (cleaned and eaten fish / cost of fishing license). We are now at $17.15 (US$) per fish. This morning we started at $175 per fish. That's no doubt the best we have ever been. 

Storms are forecast for tonight and high winds forecast for tomorrow, so we are planning to stay in place. So far all the recent forecasts have been wrong. I hope our luck continues. We have a NO day planned for tomorrow, which for us is "No Orro." We all need our space once in awhile so tomorrow we are all on our own. I wonder what they are calling their No Albanese day, other than "finally!"