Another bloody marlin
Moxie - Beck Family Adventure
Mike, Denise, Asia and Aranya Beck
Fri 15 Aug 2014 19:14
19.15.60S 166.17.41W
We are on passage from Palmerston Island to Beverage Reef with 100 miles to go. It has been extremely slow progress in this windless calm sea, we have motored for 35 hours or so but have finally found a trace of wind. Current boat speed is just 4.5 knots, for the past 24 hours we have had a counter current of 1.5 knots - so actually we are making just 3knots over ground.
Beverage Reef is an atoll 150 odd miles south east of Nuie, there is no land just a circle of coral with a pass, inside it is 30 feet deep with a sandy bottom. Our plan is to find this place crawling with painted crayfish and gorge ourselves waiting for a nice blow that will take us to Nuie.
We heard on the radio yesterday that there is no ATM on Nuie and are kicking ourselves for not taking cash out in Aitutaki, Nuie and the Cook Islands use NZD.
We haven't spotted any whales yet but this is the migration path, humpback whales head for Tonga to calve at this time of year, we will definitely see them there. Tonga is the only place in the world that allows swimming with the whales (with commercial operators only), we look forward to doing that whatever the cost.
We offloaded all our fresh Mahi Mahi in Palmerston island (gives them a nice break from parrotfish), and immediately caught a replacement once casting off. Actually we have caught two but we let one go, also we caught another marlin oh and a 20lb Wahoo which Asia did manage to get to the boat on the wrong rod. Asia had good go at getting the marlin in but he was on the wrong rod. We (or numerous yellowfin tuna I suspect) have stuffed another rod, the handle and reel twist versus the rod and rollers so it's very difficult indeed to get a decent fish in. Anyway we got him alongside and then quickly and silently debated our catch and release policy and the probability of losing another lure. Catch and release suffered a further setback and will now be implemented at a later stage.
We have a idea to create a geocache and place it at Beverage Reef, we don't have any info on how to set one up but I guess the first stage is placement, we can then sort out the Internet stuff in Nuie. Maybe there's already one there?
Mike, Denise, Asia and Aranya Beck
SV Moxie
http://blog.mailasail.com/moxie