April 22, 2009.

The front has passed. The wind died during the night and all was calm. Of course, that was until we got in the dinghy to hit the reefs one more time.

The wind was out of the north at 20 knots and due to shift to the northeast. We hustled out to the reef to get in some more hunting before the seas had time to build.

It was kind of a dull day as we spent about 4 hours splashing around. I took another hogfish as soon as I got in the water. I missed one right after that and didn’t really see another fish I considered worthy until it was time to leave. Then I was able to spear a really nice Margate over 30 inches long. I’d tell you how much it weighed but I can’t find my damn fish scale. I dunno, the boats only so big but I can’t seem to find it.

One final picture of our chartplotter installed in the aft stateroom. It was our old chartplotter we kept as a spare. Instead of letting it lie around I put it to good use as a bedside mounted drag alarm. It’s quite handy as it has a battery monitor and an alarm clock feature as well. You can see from our track how we’ve been lying to the wind as it’s clocked around. That tiny line in the middle of the arc is how the boat wandered around when the wind completely died during the night. I love this thing.

We’ve been keeping a running count of our hunting harvest for the 2009 season here in the Bahamas.

Lobster……………22
Triggerfish…………9
Hogfish……………14
Mutton Snapper…...1
Grouper……………17
Schoolmaster………2
Yellow Jack………...1
Coral Crab………….1
Almaco Jack………..1
Margate……………..3
Christy’s mysterious Moo Goo……1 (which we did eat and it was good)

That gives us a grand total of 50 fish and 22 lobsters. Not too shabby considering that we were only here in the Bahamas for 70 days. In addition to those edible species I also killed 18 lionfish because it’s the right thing to do. So we’re pretty much leaving with as much food as we arrived with.

So we’re underway for Mangrove Cay in the morning and should be able to cross back to the states on Friday.