Day 11 - FISH ON!!!
Shalan
Thu 1 Dec 2016 03:54
Wow... What a 24 hours we've had! Full of absolute highs and a couple of lows! We'll combine our daily FISH UPDATE into the script today as it features as a major part!
So we sailed into last night with the spinnaker up cruising along nicely at 9 knots. Sadly the wind dropped off at midnight and we had to sock it and turn on the motor. Sunrise came, we put the lines out (the most important job!), and we continued to motor throughout the day heading 290 degrees as there was only a gently breeze. The weather was lovely though, an absoulte scorcher and we thought it perfect to have a full english brunch on deck. Shortly after both lines went at the same time! FISH ON!!! Oli and Tom both jumped on the reels and wound in two huge corifen each about a metre long. That was Ol's first fish and the picture of him with the two was going to be our pic of the day......but oh no.....you better read on!!
During mine and Oli's watch last night we noticed the water pump kept turning on when everyone was asleep so duly investigated all the cabins and couldn't see any taps running. We turned the pump off and decided to look further at daybreak. Daybreak came and sure enough all the water tanks were empty and we noticed the bilge pumps had been running intermittently. The only other place we hadn't checked last night was in the forepeak crew cabin. When we opened the hatch it was like a turkish bath in there....lovely if you were in a spa but not conducive to sailing the atlantic on a limited water supply. The whole cabin floor was flooded and tap on the sink was running hot water. When we'd gybed the night before something must have fallen off one of the bunks and knocked the hot tap on. We had to empty everything out the forepeak and spread it all over the decks to dry out. But at least the puzzle was solved, and thank god we've got a water maker on board!!
We carried on through the day with bugger all wind, we hadn't put the lines back out all day as we now had plenty of fish on board, but boredom got the better of us and if we were going to put a lure out, it was going to be the biggest one we had...something worth catching! The big green squid hit the water.
Motoring on we dived into our ecclectic mix of iTunes music, stumbling on the classic "Paddy McGinty's 80's Mega Mix". This was originally a CD we bought from the Irish pub in Sauze D'Oux 10 years ago on a ski holiday and even now it sounded better than ever. A mini mid-atlantic rave was going on on Shalan. Realising we were also now right in the mid-atlantic and right above the deepest trench (5 kilometres deep), we were about to jump in and have a swim when something bit the line. IT WAS FLYING OUT! Luckily we were under motor and not sailng so we stuck the boat astern and got on the reel. This thing was huge! The whole rod was bent right over, the clutch was on full and it was just going out. We put the boat full astern to follow the line and continued to try and reel in. It wasn't having it though and the line was still going and going and going. We were down to our last 25 metres of line before we managed to get a bit of movement our end. We were in the game! The game bagan: we gained ground, we lost ground, we gained, we lost... This fight continued for a whole HOUR. We were all taking turns on the reel as it was absoultely knackering stuff - we had blisters on our hands, cuts on our feet and the reel was smoking and burning from the friction on the clutch. At one point we had four of us holding the rod and working the reel! The tide began to turn in our favour after around 40 minutes - the beast was tiring (thankfully) and we started to win more and more. The line was coming back in. 20 minutes later we could see the beast starting to come to the surface and BOY WAS IT A BEAST! THE BIGGEST YELLOWFIN TUNA (or any fish really) WE'D EVER SEEN IN PERSON! Weighing about 90 kilograms it took four of us to lift it out of the sea. Our equiptment outperfromed itself in landing this beast, how our 30 pound mono line and 40 pound rods didn't break I don't know. Now we had the beast on board we spent the next 90 mins gutting and prepping the fish, then undertaking a massive cleanup operation which involved emptying and washing out the whole aft garage as it stank of fish. We now have enough tuna on board to feed the six of us insanely huge tuna steaks three times a day for the next week. Sure enough, dinner tonight was cous cous and pan seared tuna steak with some balsamic reduction. From sea to plate within 2 hours....you can't get fresher than that! We'd be interested to know the price of a tuna this size at market!
Just as we were finishing our cleanup operation a squall hit bringing heavy rain and most importantly the wind picked up! Sails were back out and we were rocking along at 10 knots. The wind was gradually shifting and at 11pm we furled the genoa and put the turbo up (Code 0). At this point only Gaetan and Thomas were on watch. Next minute Tom shouts down in a panic "the code 0 is in the water". Everyone jumped up on deck. The halyard had broken and the whole sail was in the water. All of us had to drag the sail back in by hand in the dark but we managed to get it back on the boat in one piece.
We don't know what caused the halyard to fail yet but it looks like the bosums chair is going to be out in the morning and we'll have to send Gaetan to the top of the mast in the morning to figure out what's gone wrong and whether we can sort it. This is a real bugger as now is the time when we need the spinakker and Code 0 most. Our whole game plan was to head down to the trades and benefit from these two sails heading west with the trades behind us. So tonight we've just had to leave it. We've put the genoa back out, out speed has dropped and we can't make the same course and will have to gybe through the night. Hopefully we can sort it in the morning.
Just another quiet day at sea then! We hope you've enjoyed reading our blog, we'll fill you in with more tomorrow!
'Shalan out'
x
