Pearson Trip-Day 8

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

We left bright and early this morning around 6am.  This was the perfect weather window to get around the Cape.  The autopilot was finally fixed and the winds were blowing a steady 15kts from the South.  Overall, getting around Hatteras was relatively uneventful and we spent the day just motoring.  Frank even caught a tuna while trolling a line astern.  At one point, we hooked a 3 ft Mahi Mahi, but it jumped off the line as Frank was pulling it in.  We had only trolled for about an hour and a half, but the hand line frank made up was incredibly effective.  He used a daisy chain as the lure, which was recommended by the guys at our yard that are big time into fishing.  The hand line was a design copied from an expensive one online, and it worked brilliantly.  Frank added an empty can to the setup so that we could hear when we got a hit rather than having to keep an eye on it the whole time.  It was a little difficult filleting a fish on the slippery, bouncy deck, especially with a cheap serrated knife from Walmart, but killing it was a snap.  We poured Vodka in its gills and it instantly stopped its flopping. 

Hand Line Setup Frank Copied

Works Like A Charm

Not The Biggest, But Its Dinner

The night watch off Hatteras was strangely eerie, looking at the charts, there were more shipwrecks than depth soundings.  It’s strange to see the charted depths go from 30 ft to 1130 ft in less than 10 miles.  It was also weird to see a flat calm just before daybreak in an area known for its fierce weather.  Ironically enough, the winds picked up to 30kts directly on our nose within an hour after rounding Hatteras, and we had a pretty bumpy ride the remainder of the trip to Norfolk.  We arrived around 11pm, much longer than we anticipated, because we had to tack.  We discovered that we want a new toy onboard Moitessier, an AIS, which proved to be VERY useful in the shipping and naval traffic around the Chesapeake and at various points throughout our trip.