Fishing
Lochmarin
Sat 2 Feb 2013 11:53
Hah! Told you it was a matter of time. Phil put the lines out this morning and ten minutes hadn't passed before we had a beautiful mahi mahi or dolphin fish, the Spanish call them dorado because of the golden colouring. She came out a wonderful gold, with little blue spots and a bright bright green and blue fin running all along the top of her. She struggled and bucked but the hunters, Phil and Ben, overcame her. She hadn't even stopped before the line was running again, this time with an amberjack, and he was still being bled over the side when the Ben noticed we'd caught another on the other line, a second amberjack. Three fish within half an hour! So we brought the lines in, we've as much as we can eat for a few days now. The dorado has been filleted and we'll pan fry her today, one of the amberjack is in chunks and Steve has plans for him tomorrow, the second is small enough to bake whole so Ben's gutting him just now. There'll be left over's too, to add to salads or stews or put in empanada. Yum.
It was a peaceful night, apart from a strange massive ship that appeared right in front of us, loads of really big bright lights on her but no AIS. We tracked her on radar and altered course so as to let her pass about half a mile away to starboard. There's no way anyone on board would have spotted us - their night vision must have been hopeless. Phil figured it was a factory fishing boat of some kind, perhaps not showing AIS so other fishing boats didn't see where they'd found fish! She was the only boat we've seen since our first night out. We see some on the AIS, bound for Texas, New Orleans, Brazil or Nigeria, but they are all far to far away to be seen visually.
I was on last watch last night, which meant I was able to sit and see the sun fade the moon into a shadow of herself,to see the clouds flush with pink and the sea turn silver. We're still the place to be for the Storm Petrels, and a Cory Shearwater came and joined us again in the morning quiet, before the fishing raised the tempo rather!
It is very beautiful here. There's lots and lots of water but we still feel the need to watch it go by. Steve and Ben saw some intriguing browny-red semi-circular things yesterday. We need to watch out for more to figure out what they were: fins of sailfish? jelly fish? On a sadder note we sailed through a patch of plastic garbage, carrier bags and such floating by. Making us even more determined to do all we can to care for our oceans. Not even the smallest bit of plastic goes overboard from Lochmarin.
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