Sailing again!

We're on our final full day before arriving at our Caribbean destination. We expect to arrive in the morning sometime - if the winds keep us sailing fast enough. Yes, we are finally back to sailing after three full days of motoring through the stillest seas I've ever seen.

Early this morning, just after mid-night in fact, we finally started moving into some winds. We were sailing fine for a short while, but soon noticed some signs of a squall on both our radar and the large blot of clouds against the starry filled sky. Soon the winds shifted and we had to take down the sails. It was fortunate we did because the winds kicked up and clocked 180 degrees. We experienced a torential downpour of rain. That was good for the boat as it helped wash away some of the salt caked on surfaces all over the top of the boat.

We managed a couple more hours of sailing, but the winds shifted on our nose and we were back to motoring again. In the morning, we had a short visit of a small pod of 3 or 4 spotted dolphin who danced off Tahina's bows. It's always an honor to have the dolphins visit and every time they bring a smile to everyone's faces.

We had some fantastic fishing activity today. We actually only fully landed one - and we released him. But, the fishing was great anyway. The one we landed was a small blue marlin! It was "only" about three and half feet (compared to their full size of about 6-10 feet). We also hooked a full-sized marlin later in the day, but he made short work of our hook after his 3rd leap into the air and nearly pulling all the line off the reel! We also hooked some other big fish - another we never saw snapped the line. We are using 60 lb line which is normally good enough to land a pretty big fish. Definitely a day any game fisherman would enjoy!

We started sailing about 1 PM and have been sailing most of the day since. We had a brief period where we dropped sails when we passed some squalls. We're hoping to sail the rest of the way. Wish us luck!