Diving September 30th Grenada

Under Water Fun!

We are hooked!

The Big One

Onboard Wandering Dolphin we try to do some fishing on every offshore passage.  I have never been much of a fisherman, but  even back in my backpacking days in the mountains of Wyoming and Montana I would carry in a little tackle box and pole because every now and then I would chance upon a spot where the fish didn’t care that I had no skill.  These streams and lakes were few and far between but once I found one I had a ball.  It seemed like in these places the fish had just lost their minds and were committing suicide in my frying pan.  I remember one lake where we caught quite a few fish with just a bare hook!  Needless to say, one day of fishing like that would keep me packing in gear for a couple of years.

It has been very much the same since we moved on our boat.  We have trailed a line for thousands of miles and only caught a few fish but the fun we had pulling in those Mahi Mahi, Tuna, Barracuda, and yes, even once a Blue Marlin, have kept me throwing a line over the side offshore.

Like I said, we use a hand line so our gear cost us very little but every saltwater, offshore lure is worth any where from ten to twelve bucks and lately it seemed like we were pulling in a lot of empty lines.  Before our trip to Grenada I had the bright idea to switch out the 50 pound test line for 200...  The thought was that perhaps it wouldn’t constantly be snapped off when a big fish decided to bite.  Well it worked.

We had been offshore for two days before any of us felt like doing some fishing.  I set up the new handline with a bungee cord on the bitter end and hooked it all up, let all 100 feet out with our brand new Pink tuna lure on the end.  We quickly forgot about it.  No one on our boat has a lot of faith in the fishing prowess of the captain so other things quickly grab our interest.  

The line hadn’t been in the water for more than 20 minutes though before Rebecca said,

“Hey I think we caught something!  Look at the bungee all stretched out.”

Sure enough when I put on the leather gloves and started to pull it was obvious we had a big one.  I noticed that our speed had actually dropped a full two knots as  well!  I rounded us up into the wind so we were pinching and it slowed us down  to around three knots.  I positioned myself by the starboard rail and tried to pull in on the line.  It didn’t budge!  I sat there, perplexed and said,

“Honey I think I am going to have to cut it off, I can’t do anything with it.”

“Oh no you don’t we just bought all that new line, steel leader and lure!  That’s like $35 bucks, we gotta catch this fish!”  Beck looked at me as she said this with that look she has, the one that says, without saying, “Don’t be a wuss Tofer!”  The kids were all in the cockpit now and it was pretty obvious that they were all on the same page too.  I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer but I can take a hint, also I didn’t want my kids to think I was a wuss.  I shrugged my shoulders, sat back down and started to pull on the line.  I had to lean way forward (aft though since I was facing the back of the boat) and use all of my 210 pounds and negligible 44 year old unused muscle power to pull the line in a foot at a time.  With every pull Beck, who had positioned herself right behind me on deck with the hand reel, would take a wrap on the plastic hand reel.  She had to hold the weight for a second every time I leaned forward.  We began the long hard fight with a monster!  As I pulled I instructed the kids on getting the 6 foot gaff out and we began to talk through the process of winching this huge fish in once it was alongside.  The kids were debating what it might be,

  “

It’s a shark.”  Kaleb said with certainty.  “We can’t catch a huge shark, it would eat us so we should just cut the line now.”  

We decided if Kaleb was right we would go ahead and cut the line but we still wanted to see it.  One of the boys, I was to tired at the time to note which one, said it had to be a whale.  EmilyAnne kept looking back giving us a running commentary about the relative nearness of the monster. 

 

At one point she said she saw a huge fin break the surface.  

This whole time Beck and I could feel it suddenly pull extra hard like it could see the boat and knew it was going to be a meal. Then it would go slack for a second and we could pull it in another couple of feet.  We had been fighting for almost two hours when Benny said he thought it was just seaweed.  We all yelled at him and scolded him.

“Sea weed wouldn’t fight like this Ben!  You think Mom and I would work this hard to pull in a little seaweed!”  He looked chagrined as his brothers laughed at him and scoffed.

Soon we had the monster right up alongside the boat...

     

Sorry we scolded you Benny!     

Saturday Fun

EmilyAnne in Dad's Big hat

Let's learn how to fly a kite

Only Tofer can handle this giant

And it is up

A view of the anchorage

Pool Time!

Kaleb is a great model under water

I look like a dork, but someone has too

We made new friends today

Ben tries he hand at the under water photo shoot

Em learn to fly the baby kite.

It was a busy day aboard WD, it is now time to eat and rest.  Happy Saturday all.

The Burton Clan

A few pictures from the sail to Grenada

Sailing with the Burton Crew

Emily Loves to Sail

This is our tack for the trip

Charlie hates to sail

Ben and Kanyon, just another day

Sunset day 2

Waves day 2

We got Kaleb to smile

Sails out

Sunset day 3, calmer seas

Just another wave shot

Kaleb knows how to relax

 

Kanyon in his favorite spot

Ben thinking of what snack he wants

MORE WATER

Emily Anne's watch. 

Just a few of what we have.  We will fill in the stories later. 

 God Bless, Bec and Fam

In Grenada

Hi everyone!

We had a great passage and are safe in Grenada.  We will stay here and do our boat work.

Looks like we just made it out of the VI in time!

Thanks for the messages:

Mike thanks for the riddle!
Jimmy we missed you.
Herman we used less than 5 gallons of fuel... sailed the whole way motored the last 5 miles with no wind into Grenada.
Steve, Get to the mangroves!
Christian, wow did we ever have squalls!!

More to come with pictures!
Captain Tofer, Beck, Emily, Kanyon, Kaleb, Benny on WD

We're On Our Way!

We are heading south!  Right now we are passing by St Croix.  I still have cell service so I can pop off a quick blog.

Our plan is to head to Trinidad, haul the boat, work... then sail back up to Grenada for the rest of the hurricane season.

We will be using spot about every 6 hours if you are interested in where we are.  Our weather window is still good as far as the wind goes but a Tropical Wave is passing over us today and tomorrow so it is squally... lots of gusts and rain as they pass.

I sail a lot of boats and I have to say... I LOVE to sail Wandering Dolphin!  Today we raised the sails just after Porpoise Rocks, shut down the engine and have been sailing on a close reach to St Croix all day with double reefed main, stays'l, and a reefed in jib at an average of 7 knots.  In an hour or so we have to change course to a close hauled course so that will drop a bit but I think WD will be able to sail close enough to make Grenada on one tack even with these winds.

Unfortunately I cannot blog on the way since Rebecca is with us. (No one to post the blogs for us!)  If you would like to send us messages on the Iridium just read a couple posts back how to do it.  It is free for you and for us and we love to get them, especially the kids!  Sorry we cannot answer you but we really do like to hear from you.

God Bless!
Captain Tofer and the Family!

Nassau to Annapolis - Blog July 10, 2011

This morning we find ourselves just east of Cape Canaveral, out in the Gulf Stream. The wind is barely blowing at 10 knots or less from the South South West. The Gulf Stream is a tame beast this morning. If it were not pushing us along 4 knots faster than we would be going without it we would only know it was here because the swells behind us are just a little bit bigger than they would normally be with this wind strength.

We left Nassau three days ago and after a slow 24 hour run on engine power, because of low wind, we made it to Lucaya, Grand Bahama. The Garmin XM weather was showing a tropical looking disturbance just to the west and north of us and I don’t play around with the possibilities of Tropical Storms and Hurricanes at this time of the year. We pulled into Lucaya to check the weather again. Every thing looked good so we left the next morning.

During our run up from Nassau to Grand Bahama we noticed the Screecher Halyard was fraying and it was very difficult to launch. When I looked closer I noticed that it looked wrong at the top of the mast and I assumed that it had just slipped its shiv. I made a harness out of some nylon webbing (thanks to my days of rock climbing in Wyoming) and we pulled Dylan up to the top on the main halyard. He informed us that the whole shiv and all were gone! Once he was safely back on deck he reminded me of the time with Bob and Jarred when we were flying the screecher and we all heard a loud bang from the mast. We all looked but couldn’t figure out what was wrong. The rigging all was fine so we guessed that it was just a sheet banging extra hard on the mast or something. Now we know what that was... the shiv was blown out of the mast!

So we can’t fly the screecher. If we could we could sail right now and turn off this motor. The Genoa alone just can’t keep our speed up enough.

Well I just ate some eggs, bacon and a bagel for breakfast and need to get the fishing line back in the water.

Hope you all have a great day!

Captain Tofer, Captain Dick, and Dylan