Jamaica Our Position 18.10.83N 76.27.20W
Chaser 2
Yvonne Chapman
Wed 12 Mar 2008 15:30
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Sadly we left the unspoilt charm of Ille La Vache
at 07.00hrs on Monday bound for Jamaica. We had to motor for 12 hours along the
leeshore of Haiti before the winds picked up enabling us to raise sails. From
then on we made good progress toward Jamaica. Waylander suddenly came
to a stop with both fishing reels screaming. As we caught up we to stopped and
circled to watch and see if we could catch anything too. No success this time
but Mick and Tony pulled in two nice Tuna, which they killed, gutted, then
called us to say they would throw a couple of steaks over to us for our dinner
that evening. I said at the time that was a good omen because we shall now catch
one ourselves. We tried but nothing so I changed to the lure to the biggy, never
caught on it before but what the hell, we were in deep water. After an hour of
so the Penn Senator screamed off, fortunately we were motoring and we could slow
the boat quickly, a lot of line had already been taken. Slowly but suely we
gained on it, the fish jumping out of the water in the distance, I tought it was
a big Tuna, but as it got closer we could see it was a Marlin. After a fight of
about 20 minutes we got it onboard, a mighty monster as far I was concerned.
Yvonne held its beak while I plied some achohol to its gills to stun it.
There was a lot of blood from the gaff, boy, did it make a mess. We spent the
next two hours gutting, filleting and cleaning up.
We called Waylander to see if they had any
room in their freezer, we couldn't waste the prized meat. They hove to while we
caught up and threw 20 or 30 pounds of meat to them in two seperate bags. We
then tried to rearrange our freezer and managed to accomodate a 15lb lump
in steaks, the rest into the fridge. So it's fried fish, fish pie, fish curry,
fish kebabs for the last few days. I suppose the Marlin weighed about
70lbs.
We entered Port Antonio, a beautiful bay, with a
wonderful helpfull marina and staff. After clearing in with customs, rather long
winded but very polite and efficient, no charges either yet, we were free to
explore the town. First impressions, great! Unfortunately we really need to move
on to Cuba because Mick and Sharon want to see some of that before returning to
England in 4 weeks time, so our exploration of Jamaica will have to wait until
our return, but it does look good, and certainly safe. These pictures were sent with Picasa, from Google. Try it out here: http://picasa.google.com/ |
