Atlantic Passage, first fish, first sperm whales

First a little clarification. Some of you may have noticed that some posts are put up by Samantha. She is not with us right now, we are emailing our blog post to her via satellite for her to post for us.
Today is Day 3 at sea on our Atlantic Passage … at our current speed we are scheduled to arrive in 10 days 6 hours. That is pretty much the norm.. around 14 days. Only 1777 nautical miles to go! Woo hoo We left Praia marina about 6pm, just before sunset. Winds that night were off & on.. sometimes we’d have speeds around 6knots, then slow down to around 3knots. At around 7am on our first morning the wind dropped off to almost nothing & as we were just south of the most westward Cape Verde island we were still not officially in the trade winds. The seas were “confused” and we spent a few hours going about 1knot.. bobbing in the water despite trying a couple different sails to see if we could get moving. We hated to do it on day 1, but we started one of our engines to get us past the islands. Finally around 3pm the wind picked up & we were moving again! Since then the wind has been pretty consistent 20-25knots on our beam or a broad reach (this is where we want the wind.. coming from the backside). So pretty uneventful past few days since we got moving. We are averaging about 140 miles per day (except for the first where we did only 90). Yesterday we put that old saying to work again “boat ownership is the art of doing maintenance in exotic locations”. I looked up at the main sail, and saw one of the battens had worked its way about 3 feet out. These are long fiberglass rods that help the sail maintain its shape and fit into pockets sewn into the sail. Plastic fittings at each end hold the rod, and the screw plug on the back end had come out and disappeared. None of those spare on board, so we McGuyvered a replacement with a piece of webbing and a couple of screws – and then under way again. Also, I have been trying to track down why there was so much water in the port bilge. Close investigation showed that all was dry where water might have been coming from where it shouldn’t, so that only left water coming from where it should (work it through). It looks like water is getting into the sugar scoop on the port side (that is the curved back of the boat – looks like a scoop for sugar). There is a drain in there into the bilge – and that was the source of the water. I figure that it was the afore-mentioned confused seas with waves coming high on the back getting under the sugar scoop hatch, as those are not waterproof. I also think that one of the one-way valves in the bilge pump system is either missing or stuck. Today I caught my first fish !! A 5-pound Mahi Mahi… we have a couple of handlines out and I brought this one in by myself. It was actually pretty easy to bring the line in.. almost thought I was going to lose it just as it got beside the boat, but Scott was there with the gaff & brought it in. We gave it a shot of vodka & it was done. Scott got to try out his new fileting knife and we are having a feast tonight ! Also got to see a couple of sperm whales today.. they weren’t super close (250m away) but we did get to see a complete breach out of water!! Wow !! Days are pretty chill… reading, staring at the ocean, eating great meals, watching dolphins, boat projects, a bit of screen time…