Canaries
Digiboat's "Product Testing"
Simon Blundell
Wed 2 Oct 2013 11:27
1010
2/10
Motoring W now for
last 24 hrs to get around Canaries and head S with the trades on our beam. About
6 hrs more shoulkd get us the needed angle for bearing away. First sign of
trades hit us last evening and have been building overnight and are now around
15kn. All keen to get the right angle on them a freight train to the
doldrums.
Finally had our
major breakthrough for the trip yesterday just after sunrise when one of the
rods hooked up a monstor tuna. By all accounts it was possibly up to around
20kg. But it'd taken the small lure and spat it out after a short run. Then not
long after the second rod hooked up and Robbo fought for 30 min before a team
effort saw a 12-15kg stripey landed with the gaff (actually I was asleep, so the
"team" coordination could've looked more like the Marx Bros than a slick Kiwi
Rugby team). I think Ryan's trying to claim it as his fish because he set the
lures, and Jed has a counter claim because he gaffed it ....? I was called for
advice on how to slaughter, bleed and slice and dice and as soon as on deck the
rod bent and reel zipped again with another smaller stripey around 3kg. I never
saw the full large tuna as the head had been hacked off, but I did slice 4
fillets of a couple of kilos each off it.
So sashimi with
lemon, soy, wasabi for breakfast, grilled 2" thick tuna steaks for lunch and
crisp fried tuna medallions with wedges for dinner. And there's still plenty
left for more fish feeding today.
Otherwise a perfect
warm clear day on a calm ocean, finishing off a few of the critical jobs - the
fire/bilge emergency pump now fully installed and working, just some electrical
hook up to complete. The source of the leak from the deck to the bilge located
(gap in the mast boot) and now fixed. Work continues, but gets ever closer to
finished, on figuring and reconfiguring the mess of electronic devices' data
connections.
SJB