We made it after roughly 1500 miles of open ocean. The first 4 days where a rocking wild ride. The winds where mostly in the 15 to 20 knot range, but we were sailing on a broad reach across the Gulf Stream and the high apparent winds, confused seas, and high boat speeds made for a rough and noisy ride. Big cats make a lot of noise and have a violent motion when driven hard. We later were becalmed for a few days and the final third of the trip was a nice downwind push with winds in the 5 to 13 knot range.
Mahi Mahi madness set in when we had lots of fishing success. So much so we stopped fishing as we had limited fridge and freezer space. We successfully landed 5 mahi for 9 strikes. One strike was by something so massive it stripped the entire line off the reel straight down without stopping. It was so huge I couldn’t even get the rod out of the rod holder. I’ve caught and landed sharks in the 700 lb range. Whatever this was it was in the same weight range. Based on where we were and the time of night and the straight down trajectory I’m going to make a wild guess this was a large blue fin tuna in the several hundred pound range. The fish made one run straight down, I never turned him, and the drag was set as tight as I could get it. It stripped the entire reel of line and popped it when the line ran out. The fight was exciting for the 2 minutes it lasted.