It is not easy to sit down and recapture
the day yesterday since it brings up very bitter memories for me. The day
started off quite well. There were many quite angry looking clouds on the sky
and we saw rains coming down all around us, however, apart from the odd
raindrop on our deck we really had quite a pleasant and dry day with even some
nice sunny periods. Already 20 minutes after the lure hat been put out in the
morning, we had a first bite and Mike landed our biggest mahi-mahi to date
(approx. 6 kg). This one was definitely a keeper, so we took it straight down
to the galley where the fish was prepared by Mike for the departure to its
(her) final destination: Liesel’s world-famous south African fish curry. In the
meantime I put out the lure again in the hope of further exploiting our
apparent lucky streak. Around two hours later, the initial excitement had by
then died down and everyone was again minding their own business on board, the
rod indicated that something was attacking the lure. After two cautious tries
the fish decided that the pink rubber squid was in fact quite tasty and should
serve as a good lunch. My heart nearly stopped when I heard the line fly off
the reel with the characteristic sound.
We immediately noticed that this was not a mahi-mahi as it was stronger
and vehemently struggling against the invisible force that was suddenly pulling
him away. After some seemingly endless minutes of letting go and pulling in we
finally caught sight of the fish. While I at first was strongly convinced that
I had caught a hammerhead shark (or at least some other type of shark) Mike
informed me that it was in fact a young sailfish. I brought it in even further and
Jimmy got all set to get hold of it with the gaff when the disaster struck. The
hook all of sudden came loose, the line slackened and the fish was off to never
be seen again. I was devastated – the fish was literally 3 meters from the boat!!!
My only consolation was that we captured the whole scene on our GoPro camera
(see picture). But even then, it took me the whole day (and most of night
watch) to get over this great loss.
I was personally quite surprised to find
that people did not want to continue talking about the loss of my
“Lebensschwertfisch” and possible ways to improve the gaffing process in the
future for the rest of day. Instead, for everyone else, the day just continued
as though nothing had happened. Since there was a deceiving layer of clouds on
the sky most of us forgot or deemed it unnecessary to put on sunscreen. While
Philippa escaped with only a baby sunburn, it was – as so often – Markus “The
Lobster” Franke who had to pay the highest price for this foolishness. By the
evening the colour of his face and that of his signature bright orange hat were
hardly distinguishable anymore. As a result Lobster spent the rest of the
evening massaging his gleaming face with after-sun lotion. It seems to have
done the trick since he is today again running around merrily.
In the evening, the wind (and the swell)
died down quite significantly, restricting our boat speed to a meagre 3 to 4
knots. Looking at the weather forecast, this is a situation we might well have
to get used to. Apparently we expect to have quite a large stretch with no or
only little wind ahead of us. If this forecast proves to be correct and if we
find no way to avoid this area then our estimated time of arrival might well be
delayed by a couple of days. Since most of us have planes to catch, we are doing
our very best to avoid this… Another good reason for us to speed up is Dieter’s
announcement that there will be held another little celebration as soon as we
have less than 1000 more miles to go. This should be the case at some point
tomorrow or on Saturday at the latest. We are quite excited to see what Dieter
has in mind for this the Under-1000-miles-party since he has also made rather ominous
comments on possible themes or dress codes for the party.
We’ll keep you in the loop.
All the best wishes from the Thula,
Jakob
P.S. As I was typing this down, another, significantly
bigger, Sailfish was hooked. This one, however, was quite obviously a little
too strong for our equipment (especially when it is not possible to slow down
the boat) so we lost it again almost immediately.