Breaking Bad!

It's lousy weather. Grey, rainy, strong winds, steep seas and the current against us makes them even steeper. The curious thing about ocean currents is that there are well established streams that should help to shove you along in the right direction, but which in our experience set in the opposite direction. So the South Equatorial Current which is meant to sweep westwards and up the Gulf of Papua seems to be in reverse.

We caught a nice tuna today, and as it is my day on chef duty I produced a Harissa and sesame coated seared Ahé served with a sun dried tomato, onion and cannelloni bean salad, enlivened by a second salad of thinly sliced cabbage, dressed with sesame oil and cashew nuts sprinkled with cayenne pepper.

For supper I cooked Banana Lime Fish, and marinated the tuna in lime juice, garlic, grated ginger and chilli with chopped bananas. After two hours in the fridge it was quickly pan fried before sealing it in a tin foil package to steam in the oven. (I would have wrapped it in banana leaves and placed these on a hot stone oven, or Umu, if we'd been ashore.) This was accompanied by orange and white sweet potato slices with chopped onions baked in coconut milk. It seemed to get a thumbs up from the crew, and Mark said it was the best tuna he'd tasted, which was nice.

Just before supper we aimed to put up the spinnaker pole to windward in anticipation of a midnight downwind run towards Port Moresby. Unfortunately as we raised the pole the end suddenly snapped off, and shot through the mainsail, leaving a foot-long tear. To prevent the rip spreading we quickly rolled the main down to a third reef. Now I hope I can get a spare Harken part flown up to Thursday island, or more likely, Darwin. The sail repair we will try to effect with needle and thread and a bit of spare sailcloth, until we can find a sailmaker.

On investigation the part that snapped had been badly bent at some point, although we can't recall any incident that could have done that. Perhaps it was damaged when we bought TinTin. It was lucky that it happened when it did and not when under full load under sail in a gale, and that no injuries resulted.