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Libeccio - Another First!



Yes, we know- this is the second blog post in as many days. Normally, there can be weeks in between. We will keep this one short as wanted to celebrate catching our first fish of the WARC. We realise that the vast majority of boats will have already caught many fish by this time, but, we have not started to try to fish until this leg. We have to say a big Thanks! to Mark on Mad Monkey for his tutorial on how to arrange our "muppets", yes, seriously, that is what they call the lures.

Paul had tried initially yesterday when we were being followed by a small school of very large fish that we initially thought were dolphins, but, they never surfaced or swam by our bows as they tend to do. It was literally 5 seconds after Paul had dropped the lure in the water that it was struck by one of these behemoths and an additional 15 seconds before we heard the "pop" that confirmed that the fish had broken the 70 pound line that the lure was attached to. That shook us up a little and so we chose not to try until that pack of rogues had left our stern.

Bring on today, it was a bit more normal in that we were no longer being followed and so when Paul dropped the lure in the water...nothing happened- somewhat reassuring actually. We trolled for a few hours and decided to change the lure when Gary from Solitude mentioned that he had a strike using a purple muppet. So, Paul made up a lure with a purple muppet as the "teaser" and then dropped that one in. Imagine our relief when it wasn't attacked by some lurking massive fish. Instead, after an hour of two of trolling, the reel started to spin in the way that only a fish on the line can cause it to. Paul had a good time trying to slow the fish down before we ran out of line and then steadily brought it to the back of the boat. The gaff made sure it was not going to escape and it was brought on to the boat. Paul thinks it is around 12 pounds and after consulting with our fishing friends on nearby boats decided that it was a Bonita Tuna.

Not only is Paul an accomplished fisherman but he is even better in preparing his catch. We were treated to cerviche with pineapple, fresh limes and their zest, red onion along with small cubes of the fish. Our main was pan fried tuna with a sauce that combined soya, grated ginger, wasabi and sesame oil. Yummy!

We wish that the sailing was one tenth as good as the food. We have struggled all day as the wind is coming from the south west which, you guessed it, is exactly where we need to get to. We tried sailing west then tried going east, but, both times we were being taken much further away from out destination. So, we have settled for a motor sail along a course that is to close to the wind for us to actually sail, but, the wind does catch the sail and push us along a little bit. It looks like we are about 225 nm from the finish and so we hope to arrive mid day on Thursday.

More immediately though, is our crossing of the equator. We need to make an offering to Poseidon as we cross in order to have safe sailing in the future. We are very much looking forward to that!!


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