Monday November 4th, 2002
Sail to Margarita

We rose with the sun this morning and readied Force Five for a fifty mile trip to Porlamar- the anchorage we'll be staying in in Margarita. The mainsail cover came off, we stuffed pillows around breakable items below, and let the engine warm up while we wriggled on our sailing gloves before Curt pulled up the anchor and I steered us southward with the little islands growing smaller in the distance off our stern.

It rained, and rained, and then rained some more, for the entire ten hours it took us to get there. It was beautiful though. It reminded me of the dramatic gray seas in San Francisco, as we sipped coffee from the refuge of our cockpit. As always, we put our fishing line out right away- and had a record breaking day! The overcast skies led four fish to our hook: three tuna and a two and half foot King Fish! While Curt steered us downwind, I was as busy as any day I'd had at work- between reeling in one fish, cleaning him, and then rushing to reel in the next. At one point, an eerie looking fishing boat changed its course to follow us for some time- perhaps fifteen minutes or more. On the VHF, we could hear them rattling on and on in Spanish too fast for us to catch anything they were trying to say. They could have been trying to trade fish for cigarettes, or they could have been wanting to rob us blind. In any case, they redirected their course at last and went of in a different direction without getting a response from us.

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