16:09S 165:40W

 

We’ve found the best time to fish in the Pacific – or anywhere for that matter – is just on dusk.  Of course this presents all sorts of dilemmas...such as, shall we rely on catching a fish for dinner or shall we take something out of the freezer?  Leaving Suwarrow we lost our lure to a huge fish so David set about making one.  Australians Ian and Wendy on Outsider have a range of home made lures including one fashioned from a toothpaste tube and one featuring a Vegemite label.  We’re not Vegemite fans but we did have an empty Colgate tube.  A bit of snipping and soon we had a brand new lure on the line.  We towed it all day and cursed the Japanese fishing boats raping and pillaging (we’ve seen a few on this trip) when nothing happened.  But then, right on cue at sunset, the line whirred into action.  David had a right royal battle before eventually landing a massive sailfish.  I wanted to let it go but it was too well hooked and we had to gaff it to get it on board.  Neither of us like catching game fish but we hadn’t caught a fish for a while (it had been too rough to fish on the Maupiti to Suwarrow leg) and we were salivating at the thought of fish.  So sorry sailfish but appetites before sensitivities.

 

To be sure we caught a fish and using Murphy’s Law, I’d taken a bolognaise out of the freezer.  We feasted on a bit of sashimi (in soy and wasabi) before eating boring spaghetti bolognaise for dinner and dreaming about fresh fish which will be on the menu the rest of the week.  We’re about to have poisson cru for lunch.

 

Meanwhile as the fish arrived the wind deserted us so we were forced to motor.   We’re right in the convergence zone and our good friend Mark on Balvenie, who helps with our routing, told us it would be very light.  NZ weather forecaster Bob McDavitt predicted we may have to motor – still, we’d rather do that than have the 50knots friends had in the same area.  The seas have also got quite lumpy so it’s been a rather unpleasant morning.

 

Hopefully the wind will return soon but we’re always careful what we wish for!