Fast Boats and Big Fish

We spent most of the day running cats Paw IV down. By this morning, they had got about 15 miles ahead of us. Where we got caught in a several squalls (no real rain but they took all the wind!!) they had only one. Anyhow, they shortened sail and we pulled up the main with a reef and ran headsail, main and mizzen all day. We had a great run, 6+ knots all day and by this afternoon we were hitting 7 knots pretty consistently. The boat is running flat and fast with seas running only about 1 meter. I just rolled up some headsail to slow down as we need to stay behind Cats Paw.
This morning's deck inspection found one really tiny flying fish and one granddaddy of a flying fish. In the middle of the night, Cathy asked me to check to see what the banging was on deck and when I looked it was the bloody great flying fish thrashing out its last. Probably 8-10 inches long, big for one of these guys. This fish has survived birds, other predators, accidental landings on boats so my question is did he jump or was he pushed? Do we have a case of fishicide here? We will probably never know the truth.
Just talked to Barry on Cats Paw IV and we are now keeping about 2 miles separation and both boats are comfortably running between 6-7 knots. At this rate we will have to heave to Monday AM to wait for tide. Rather that than push it, however we did hear from friends who are there now that you can enter pretty much anytime EXCEPT at low water so I'm not too worried about time now.

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see:

http://www.sailmail.com