We had an 8:00 a.m. start from Turtle Bay It is Saturday afternoon and still no fish although others in the fleet are catching Dorado and Tuna. It was a slow start out of the bay with little wind to help propel us to Bahia anta Maria. We had hoisted the Spinnaker and most of the fleet had done the same so it was quite a sight with 140 boats all heading out to sea. The wind soon gave out and we took in the Spinnaker and turned on the engine

On the way out of Turtle Bay we had many Squid attacking our fishing lures. If you pulled the lures in slowly, close to the boat, you could see them come up and put their tentacles around the lure and then slide off it. They were about foot long and strong swimmers in groups of four or five. Some of the boats had crew pull their lures from the front of the boat while crew at the stern gaffed them aboard. There was a lot of chatter during the afternoon on the radio about cleaning and preparing Squid. All we managed as a couple of tentacles that got caught in the hook.

Having worked our way offshore about 15 miles we finally found some wind and again hoisted the Spinnaker. Unfortunately, the wind angle was not good and the only way we could keep the sail full was to continue heading offshore.

After dinner, we finally got a bite on the blue and white lure that we had on the rod and reel. We pulled in a nice Dorado (Mahi Mahi) of about two and a half feet in length. We were not really prepared to deal with it and it was quite a bloody affair trying to dispatch it. I had whacked it on the head four or five time with the winch handle before it finally lay still. The cockpit, crew and boat were all covered in blood however we had our first fish, even if it was something of a primitive and primal event. It took some time to clean up the boast from al the blood and afterwards, I took it below to clean and fillet.