The tunny strikes twice...
A year afloat: to the Caribbean and back
Sam and Alex Fortescue
Thu 11 Aug 2011 14:39
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43:26.26N
023:39.10W The fearsome spinakoo remained aloft throughout the
night. We had made such good progress during the day that it seemed unthinkable
to strike the sail and condemn ourselves to another night of wafting along,
flopping from side to side. So we took it in turns to do a three hour spinnaker
watch - hand glued to the tiller and eyes always flicking between the compass,
the wind indicator and the sail. It's hard work, and the possibilites of
truffling for Mars bars in the sweetie cupboard are vastly reduced by the fact
that one can't relinquish the tiller.
All the same, time flies by like this - much more
so than during a 'normal' night watch when the Hydrovane is steering and the
only attention required is a loose lookout for other ships and minimum sail
trimming. It isn't unkown for a chap to polish off a packet of M&Ms, a Twix
and some dried apricots in such a watch - anything to keep one
awake.
I hope we've learned the lessons of our previous
night-time spinnaker sessions on the westward crossing, and we'll get the sail
down shortly to check for chafe and other potential gear failures. I have no
desire to be up at midnight winching a sodden spinnakoo from the briny with
propellor tears in it.
Meanwhile, we scored another own goal in the
fishing stakes - so far it is scaly sea beasts five, Summer Song one. Line went
whizzing off the reel just after sunset yesterday and I hauled it in until I
could make out a silvery form glittering on the surface in the bright moonlight.
Just as Alex and Elise passed me the murderous gaff hook to scoop him up, he
gave a feeble flap of his tail and apparently came loose. I had just time to
recognise the long pectoral fins that gave him away as a smallish tunny, before
he sank out of sight. Needless to say, we were all furious after such a long,
keen wait for sashimi. But Elise was particularly cross, as one of her two main
aims of this trip is to eat fresh tuna (the other was seeing dolphins, which we
accomplished on day one).
In a further bitter twist to the tale, I found that
something had bitten off our lure during one of this morning's watches. The lure
was a diving one, attached to the line with a steel trace, but I'd fixed a
little pink squid look-a-like to the end of the nylon line, before the final
link to the lure. I reckon that something with teeth went for the squid and
sheared clean through the fishing line. Desperate times call for desperate
measures, so we've pressed a weary looking Cynthia the squid back into service.
This was the lure that brought us tuna, wahoo and mahi mahi on the Caribbean
crossing.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, hopes
are, once again, high. By my reckoning we have perhaps three days to catch
something; after that, the moon is full and there are three days when the fish
are reluctant to bite. By then, we'll be in the western approaches to the
Channel, and we can only hope for mackerel.
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