39:14.6N 06:27.5E

Sunday 27^th July

Lazy day spent sorting out the deck lockers, not so much tidying them, but reassessing what we need where, now that we have been cruising for nearly two months!

Plenty to watch as well as various huge gin palaces came into our bay and tried to drop anchor, mostly making a pig’s ear of it all. Slightly galling was the fact that they were all British flagged and owned! No shortage of advice was forthcoming from various anchored boats, the most vociferous being a Frenchman who ended up getting a short lesson in Anglo Saxon from a very tired and emotional (and embarrassed) skipper on a Sunseeker V70.

At 8.00pm we weighed anchor and pottered further into the natural harbour up to Mahon, with Sarah clicking away on the camera. There is no doubt  that she is getting almost as much fun out of the new one as me! (Photos will be posted at www.rhbell.com just as soon as we get to wifi. There is quite a backlog waiting to go up!) Added to the fun was the arrival of a stunning yacht, whose size defied any guessing, but it had 6 sets of spreaders on the mast which is a bit of a clue! Picture will be posted.

Left Menorca just before 9.00pm and set a course for Sicily, via the Southern tip of Sardinia. Just a faint breeze blowing absolutely bang on the nose, so we had a gently flapping sail as well as the engine running. After an hour or so, the wind did come round enough to fill the main sail, but the instruments were still reading 1.5 knots of true wind. Lots of shooting stars were the sole entertainment during the night watches, plus of course a couple of large ships who needed to be in exactly the same bit of the sea as us at the same time.

Monday 28^th July

As the sun started to rise, we were enveloped in fog, which then began to clear on our port side but remained down the starboard side and behind us. It was the start of my watch, so with the dawn breaking I thought that it might be time to drag the poor old plastic squid behind us for a while. Now there are those amongst you who think that I am more than a little mad to keep trying with this ridiculous lure and if truth be told I had tried to find a fishing shop on Saturday, but to no avail. So back into the water went the pink squid and I got on with the important business of listening to the Rolling Stones on my Ipod. Less than 30 minutes later the rod is bent right over and the reel is screaming as the line flew out. Such was my lack of confidence in this fishing lark, I did not bother to wake Sarah, but just slowed the boat and began to ‘fight’ the fish. Well, perhaps that is a bit of an over statement, but it did take nearly 30 mins to reel the line in, by which time I was certain that this was not a fish at all, but a clump of weed or somesuch item. So you can imagine my surprise and joy when I saw the glint of silver from the belly of a real live fish and better still, a rather big tuna. Had to wake Sarah to help me with landing it, which of course is something we had not quite got round to planning! I got the fish close to the back of the boat, where Sarah photographed it, just in case we failed to get it on board, which was handy because as I went to gaff it, the tuna made a last desperate bid for freedom and broke free. Now I had a serious problem as I had woken Sarah from a deep, but rather too short a sleep (half an hour ...) and also whetted her appetite for fresh tuna on the BBQ, only to fail through my incompetance. There may be more to this fishing lark than we first thought...Hinchers where where you when I needed your help?

Sarah returned to bed and I thought that I ought to try again with my fishing, just to prove it wasn’t luck but consumate skill that nearly gave us fresh fish for lunch, although we did both agree that what might have been handy another time was a large landing net.

Anyway, out went the lure again and I settled down to read my ‘Fishing for Cruisers’ book, with reference to the sections on playing the fish and landing the catch!

About 20 minutes later I was taking a look at a cruise ship that was just beginning to appear over the horizon, when I saw two sperm whales in the distance. Too far away to photograph, but then suddenly it didn’t matter because the rod was bent right over again and the line was flying out. Older and wiser I jumped to the rod and started to control the line brake. However this was different in a whole lot of ways. This fish was clearly considerably bigger than the last and had no intention of joining us on board! Sarah came up on deck when she heard the engine note change and found me fighting this fish for real. It took over an hour to win the struggle and finally we got it close enough to the back of the boat to see what we had got.

Well what we saw (and photographed) was a very large tuna with up to 8 (little – 4 feet-ish?) sharks circling it as it still thrashed about, waiting their chance. We hatched a plan to gaff the tuna and haul it on board, but clearly we needed to be quick as the sharks now were getting very confident and brushing the stern of the boat. Sarah pulled on the line to get the fish close to the stern and I reached out and sank the gaff hook into the body behind the head (well bloody close) and with a big heave pulled the fish clear of the water up onto the back deck. At this point Sarah poured some cheap Spanish Brandy into its gills (I read somewhere that this induces a heart attack) and with a minimum of fuss (it was probably exhausted anyway) it stopped flapping and died. Looking back into the sea, there were the dissapointed sharks and an extraordinary creature which was like a huge octopus tentacle, at least 10 feet long and largely transparent,  wriggling down into the depths.

We now had no idea what to do next, so in a perfect display of teamwork and ingenuity, I read the chapter on gutting etc. and together using a sharp knive, a bread knife, chicken shears and a very large plastic tub that has proved useful in so many ways over the past 8 weeks, we photographed it (hope to post this pic by sat phone as well)) weighed it on our nice shiny new fisherman’s pocket spring balance (15 kgs / 33 lbs) and Sarah then cut loads of fillets for the fridge. Sadly there was just too much for us to keep and store on board so the residue was confined to the deep, much to the delight of the sharks. As we lobbed the final bits over the side there was a large splash alongside us and suddenly there were dozens of dophins playing nearby. Sarah got a couple of pictures, but frankly we rather felt as if we might have had enough excitement for one day already and it is still only 11.00am.