Day 9
Our first angling success came to Graham with a 2 kg dorado, which was brought on board amidst great celebration and joy – it may be a tiddler to some, but this catch spelt some fresh fare to have the following evening! It was at this point the Norwegians came into their own (they know their fish!) with Jan bringing instant death with an unusual fist down the throat approach followed by an upward yank, prompting his father, Kaare into action, wielding a knife, topping and tailing the beast spilling its guts on the floor, all completed within the bat of an eye. Our attempts to catch a second dorado ended prematurely with the loss of our fifth lure – therefore settling for a future fish soup rather than a large fish dinner. Maybe not akin the drama of the ‘The Old Man and the Sea’, but certainly Hemmingwayesque in its execution. Surely this fish will grow in size as we retell the tale in future days!
Dinner a la Steve and Graham featured an interesting Mexican lamb cous cous – no Moroccan spices on board, but enough world flavours to set up some odd crew behaviours. David snoring his head off and missing the night of the ‘Great Storm’ retold over the last two blog reports, decided to arrive early for the next, by misinterpreting some great clanging above his bed in the bow of the boat at 10.30pm to be the next sizeable squall – fully donning wet weather gear to be met by blank expressions of Steve, Gregorio and Kaare on the deck and helm! Que passé wee man? The sting in the tale of the lamb cous cous came later in the night for John and Graham with a blocked head, which is still testing their plumbing capacities!
Now completed 1285 nautical miles with around 1405 miles to go, in the safe charge of our ARC award winning female skipper Emily – and with a crew of ne’er do wells still manages a smile (see our pic of the day). So as we approach our mid-way point, time to reflect on the sights and scenes of our passage so far. We have seen shearwaters, Arctic terns, a single skua, a lost Caribbean pintail, a whale, two pods of dolphins, loads of flying fish and countless shooting stars, two at close quarters – and for the last two days, not another boat or ship – ‘The sea The sea’ so describes the ‘Loneliness of the Long Distance Sailor’.
David