08.06S 129.53W
JENNY
Alan Franklin/ Lynne Gane
Sun 23 Mar 2008 10:26
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Well today was a day of first's it was the first
time we had caught a Marlin and the first time since leaving the Galapagos that
we disconnected the Towgen.
Let's deal with the Marlin first these fish are
what is known as "Game" fish they are fished for sport because they are big
sometimes 200 lb and they fight like mad, in fact the fisherman is strapped
into a special chair ( so that he doesn't get pulled in) at the stern of
these sports boats especially designed for Marlin fishing and you pay hundreds
of dollars to go fishing for the day,it can take hours to land one of these
fish.
Having set the scene our capture of one of these
was a real team effort Alan reeled it in I landed it Jenny jumped on the
cockpit seat when she saw its sword like point and Ellie took the picture
Alan jumped out of the way when it started to thrash about in the cockpit ,I was
at the tail end leaning off the back of the boat with the gaff hook through
its body.Its sad that we have so little to amuse us apart from the odd highlight
like this.
We were not sure what we had on the line until we
had it close to the boat,Alan did a brilliant job to get it alongside because at
any time it could have snapped the line if he tried to pull it in to hard,
anyway there it was thrashing about all 5 ft of it weighing about 45lbs ( I only
said they go up to 200lbs) and drinking our gin in fact it finished the bottle
so we won't be inviting any of his friends on board.It was brilliant long thin
and built for speed and a brilliant midnight blue colour with a large dorsal fin
to give it maximum manoeuvrability when hunting its prey a true hunter of the
sea.
Needless to say within the hour it was gutted
filleted and in the freezer, it was a welcomed addition to our dwindling stocks
as the cupboard is nearly bare of fresh food ,last night it was Marlin fillets
for dinner and it tasted a bit like Tuna and Mahi mahi combined with the texture
of Tuna but a bit softer,but very filling.We have the pictures!!
The second thing that happened ,after the fish this
is really boring,was we removed the Towgen.This is a piece of equipment that you
tow behind the boat to produce electricity by towing a propeller through the
water that turns a generator but by doing this you loose boat speed.Now iI had
come to the conclusion throughout this trip that our boat was sailing like an
old tub and we were not really getting the sort of speeds that we should do well
its all down to this Towgen as a) its partially seized hence its not
producing electricity and b) unlike before we have towed it continuously on this
trip.We worked out that it cost us 200nm which meant that had we not deployed it
we would have overtaken Baccus a Jeanneau 452( a bit longer than us but an
older design) even though he left a day before us.
At this point you must understand that this is not
a race but you may remember that Baccus beat us on the leg from Gibraltar to
Lanzarote but we beat him by a day and a bit across the Atlantic.But its not a
race.As it is we do not have enough time to catch up now,well I don't think
so.What dumbo's we are not to realise until after two weeks of sailing what was
holding us back especially in the early part where we had light winds call
ourselves sailors.
We are now doing between 7 and 7.5 knts running
with about 15 knts of breeze.
I think that's enough excitement for one
day
As you are aware our next Island
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