Blood Bath! S 9 02 W 134 43
Gryphon II
Chris and Lorraine Marchant
Tue 1 Jun 2010 12:25
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We are nearing our destination at last. We shall
arrive either early Wednesday or if the wind picks up a bit on Tueday,
Lorraine's birthday.. We are currently sailing dead down wind in a gentle sea
with about a Force 3 to 4...very comfortable sailing. George is steering and I
look out every half an hour or so. However there is never anything to see. In
the 3 weeks we have been sailing we have seen 1 ship, 1 Japanese fihing boat and
1 yacht (who we arranged to see and had a photo shoot as they went past
us)....oh and 1 whale and a pod of dolphins.
Last night we had just finished a game of Scrabble
and it was getting late so I decided to haul in the fishing line. It seemed a
bit heavy and as I gradually pulled it in this enormous tuna appeared. It was
about 26 pounds in weight. In Lorraine's words it looked like a small pig. It
was very fat and we at first thought it must be full of water from being towed
by the boat....but in fact it was pure muscle.
Anyway we managed to haul it on board and there
then ensued a blood bath in the, by now, darkness of the cockpit. We have
a step at the back of the boat where you are almost at water level and I managed
to do most of my butchery there. Fortunately by the time we got it on board it
was almost dead with exhaustion and it did not put up much of a fight. We learnt
that if you squirt alcohol in their gills it stops them thrashing about so that
a quick thump with the winch handle can dispatch them.
I proceeded to cut off its head, gut it and remove
its backbone. Athough I cleaned up as best I could in the dark, the following
morning the back of the boat looked like the scene of a particularly hideous
murder, with blood spatters and the odd bit of bone and flesh. Anyway now with a
clean boat it looks as if we will be having rather a lot of tuna meals. We have
turned the fridge right up in the hope we can preserve as much of as possible
for as long as possible so that we can give it to some of the people on the
other boats when we get in.
An Australian friend of ours is already in
Hiva Oa and it has been quite useful being able to find out in advance
things like what time it is, whether there is a cash machine (there is amazingly
) and whether we can get access to the Internet there ( we can). He was saying
how nice it was to be able to sleep for more than 4 hours at a go. He also said
it was nice to be able to go for a walk...but the locals want to give you rides
in their cars. Sadly he said that he has not yet seen a grass
skirt!
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