Fresh tuna anyone?? The lost blog entry

Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Sat 17 Nov 2007 19:32
28:23.590N  66:56.765W
 
This blog entry never made it....but here it is, the long awaited fish story.
 
We continued our downwind sail all through Friday night (11/16) as the temperature and barometric pressure both continued to increase dramatically - more signs that the bad weather is now behind us.  Nice.  At 8am this morning (Saturday) we broke down and turned on the engine and started motorsailing to maintain speed in the decreasing winds.  This is the first time the engine has been on since Wednesday, and even then we only ran it for 12 hours.
 
As we  motorsailed along on this beautiful day, Don and Bill decided it was a good time to fish.  And by beautiful day, I mean beautiful day.  Sunny, not too hot, not too cold, puffy clouds in the sky, and the water.  Have I mentioned the color of the water?  I always thought that this kind of sailboat cruising was called blue water cruising just because it sounded good.  Wrong.  The water is an intense, deep, sapphire blue.  We noticed the color change as soon as we got a good distance away from land.  The water is positively enchanting.  At first it was a little freaky being out here with only water on the horizon in every direction, but the view grows on you after a while and it doesn't seem desolate or scary at all.  The 360 view of sapphire water makes us feel like we are in our own little world - a moving dome of water and sky. 
 
After the decision was made to fish, out came Don's new fancy ocean fishing pole and associated paraphernalia.  Don trailed a line behind the boat off the fishing pole and Bill trailed a 'hand line' behind the boat.  With the fishing apparatus all set, we sat down to a marvelous lunch of burritos, Guinness (Bill) and Sam Adams (Don).  We were halfway through eating when Don noticed that we had a strike on both lines.  Two fish!  At the same time and only an hour after the lines had been set!  The flurry of activity that followed was very entertaining and went on for almost two hours.  Don dashed to the fishing pole and Bill did the same to the hand line.  Both started pulling in their fish, anxious to see what it was.  In the meantime, Don is yelling instructions at Anne.  'Slow the boat down!', 'Get the gin!' (Don had read that spraying some type of alcohol into the fish's gills will cause it to become more docile and easier to 'land'.), 'Get the gaff!', 'Get the fishing book!' (the one with instructions on how to gut and cut up the fish), 'Get the other fishing book!' (the one with pictures so we know what we caught), 'Get the bucket!', 'No! The cloth bucket, not the plastic one!', 'Get the scrub brush!', 'Yes!  The one with the handle and the other one too!', 'Get the fish knife!'.  In between the instructions, the two boys (oops, I mean men) were yelling to each other. 'It's a yellow fin tuna!', 'I think it's a yellow fin tuna!', 'Yup! It's a yellow fin tuna!', 'Wow! Look at that!' , 'It's at least 25 pounds!'.  And so on.  It was decided that we would let the smaller tuna go (which was Don's - too bad for him), and keep the larger tuna.  I'm not exactly sure how this happened as I was trying not to watch the gutting and cutting part, but it ended up that Don read from the fish book while Bill, a.k.a. the fishmonger, gutted and cut up the fish.  I was hoping to avoid all contact with the fish in this state, but was left with the job of washing all the tuna steaks off and preparing them for the freezer.  I finished freezing the pile of tuna they sent my way (piled in my favorite giant pasta salad Tupperware container, by the way) when they showed up with another bucket full.  Oh my God - we have enough tuna to feed the entire island of St. Thomas.  They are really going to like us when we get there.
 
To make a long fish story short, we saved out enough tuna to grill for dinner, and put the rest in our very large freezer, which is now very full.  Dinner was excellent - the tuna prepared by Bill the fishmonger and grilled by Don. Because no fish story is complete without proof, attached is a picture of the two proud fisherman and their catch (note that Don is posed in such a way that it appears he is taking credit for what was actually Bill the fishmonger's catch).  Also attached is a picture of Don reading the yellow fin tuna cleaning instructions to Bill the fishmonger.
 
The only problem now is that fishing has been banned on the good ship Harmonie until its very full freezer becomes less than very full. 
 
More adventures tomorrow, I'm sure.
Anne 

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