Afternoon all,
It is the evening of our fifth day at sea on our passage to St Lucia and the famously reliable trade winds seem to be off trading somewhere else. Throughout last night our true wind speed dropped steadily from 11 knots down to around 7 and has stayed there throughout the day. A quick chatter amongst the crew this morning and we decided to bang on the motors and focus on fishing.
Our fishing successes seem to range from desperate to downright unbelievable. The first "success" if you can call it that was Drew and Paul bringing in a nightmarish looking creature in the middle of the night we have dubbed a ratfish because we dont know what its called. With oil black scales and a set of mismatched large fangs we can assume its a scavenger and threw the creepy fella back in the water instead of risking eating it.
Yesterday saw us hook into something far more sizeable and promising. The only problem with this particular fishy encounter is that it was hooked on a rod that doesn't have a ratchet (Meaning the reel doesn't make a noise when the line is running out). The lack of any kind of alarm meant we only realised there was a fish on the line when we saw the rod was bending and it was out of line. Paul calmly informed us there was 1000 metres of line on that reel meaning our dinner was now a kilometre away but somehow still attached. A joint effort between myself and paul saw us gain about 200 metres of line before the hook got dislodged and we had to resign ourselves to a dinner of curried chicken and pasta (hard life isnt it?).
Ever the optimists this morning we set the lines as normal and settled down to wait. I was woken from my after lunch nap by Drew and Paul telling me there was a fish on my line. Jumping up excitedly I started to reel in what felt like a small to medium sized tuna, with Paul besides me ready to bring the fish on board I had it about 10 foot from the boat when suddenly the reel exploded in my hand and the line started to peel off in the opposite direction faster than Usain Bolt with a firework up his bum. Something had grabbed my fish. About 60 foot out we saw a thrash of white water and the telltale fin of a shark as it wrestled with my poor wee fishie, and the line when slack. Bitten straight through. I reeled in the line lamenting the loss of my new favourite lure and the fish supper we could have had. (Settling instead for steak and jacket potatoes on the BBQ, I repeat, Hard life isn't it?).
Cheers all!
Adele 1 crew