10:43S 135:31W

 

24 hour run – 130nm

miles to go - 188nm

 

It’s always a great feeling to hook and land a fish – especially a good sized one – and yesterday we landed another magnificent bluefin tuna.   We were actually lucky to get it as we were both down below when it struck – I was just waking from my afternoon nap and Brenda was in the galley.  Neither of us heard the noise at first but when I yelled “fish” Brenda was up on deck like a rocket.  It took two of us to haul it in – Brenda on the reel and me pulling the line in.  This fish was far more docile than the previous one which I had to wrestle on the back of the boat.   It seemed resigned to its fate and went without a whimper.  Neither of us particularly like dealing to fish but we certainly like eating them and last night’s seared tuna was absolutely delicious.

 

Having travelled nearly 4000 nm since Panama we’ve been surprised not to have caught many fish – in fact the fishing has been terrible.   Normally we’d expect to catch mahimahi, wahoo and perhaps kingfish but all we’ve caught this time is tuna – no complaints there but we’re surprised not to have caught others.  We always tow one or more lures behind us and once we’ve caught enough for a feed we take the lures in.  In the past we’ve never had any problem catching fish even in the Caribbean and up the East Coast of the US.  This passage we’ve gone for days without a strike.   Other boats we speak to on the SSB net have also reported few catches.  We wonder if this is because it has been full moon or whether the fish stocks are not what they used to be.  Interestingly, we towed the tuna carcass for a few hours last night and didn’t even attract sharks.  One of our cruising guides talks about how the EU funded Spanish fishing fleet along with the Japanese and Korean have decimated fishing stocks in the Pacific, much of the catch going into tinned tuna.  It’s dreadful to think of the damage these purse seiners and long liners must do – catching everything in their wake including sea birds of which we’ve also seen few.  Fellow cruisers stopped and rescued three turtles from a net on the trip down to the Galapagos – a fourth was already dead.  It’s sobering stuff but we’re not sure what the answer is.  Until the world wakes up to the damage these commercial fishers are doing to the oceans the devastation will continue.

 

Onto sailing and, hate to say it but this is our slowest 24 hour run yet.  We had good wind until about 6am, which is when it usually dies.  When it still hadn’t returned at breakfast we debated about motoring as we knew if we kept our boatspeed at about 5knots we’d arrive in Fatu Hiva tomorrow (Easter Sunday).   But we can’t bear motoring when then is some wind, so we pottered along at about 3 knots for a few hours blowing our chances of an early arrival.  Our arrival is now early Monday morning – what’s another day at sea after all this time?