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Sapphire II - 6 Feb (Day30): Dolphins, Pelicans & Tuna
Sapphire II - 6 Feb (Day30): Dolphins, Pelicans & Tuna
We set off from La Playita at 1 pm, happy to be out of the marina and headed for Contadora island in the Las Perlas. The trip was about 35 miles and we used the time to brief the less experienced crew on watch-keeping and Colregs (collision avoidance at sea). We also talked through the process of handling our new fishing rods and how we would land a fish if we were lucky (skillful?) enough to catch one.
The first sign that we would have a fortunate day was the appearance of 2 dolphins, who stayed with us for half an hour and swam effortlessly in front of (and sometimes under) Sapphire's bow. They are amazingly graceful creatures who thrilled all on board with their jumping and frolicking and sometimes even rolling over to wink at us observers!
After the dolphins left us, we came across literally swarms of pelicans fishing (pelicans2 ). They evidently communicated with each other, because we would see lone "scouts" out ahead and when the found their prey, the others would quickly gather (pelicans ). It then looked like a feeding frenzy followed as the birds clustered around in the water, or rose up only to dive back down.
We reckoned that if the pelicans were enjoying the sea's bounty, then so might we, so we drove the boat right through the swarm of birds. Sure enough, about 10 minutes later, the fishing reel began to sing and the cry of "fish on" was heard. Gavin took the rod and played the fish like he had been doing it all his life. Thank goodness we had had Scott give us the scoop earlier. The boat's transom was prepared with a cutting board, gaff and knife, and also the rum to pacify the catch. Soon Gavin had him landed and we excitedly saw a nice looking 3 lb tuna being skillfully carved into strips for sushi.
The transom was still being cleaned off when the same reel, which we had returned to the sea, began to howl. We were basically taken by surprise to hear another fish take the lure so soon after the first. Aha in Gavin took the rod and strapped into a waist band to secure the rod. Just as well, because he immediately told us that this was a much bigger fish. And indeed this one put up quite a fight with the fish giving as much as he got. Gavin would let him run and then slowly reel some line back in. This see-saw battle continued until the fish was within sight. We backed up the boat to help and the fish made one last effort to outwit us by attempting to run the line around the rudder. Luckily he failed and Scott swiftly gaffed the prize. (gavin_tuna ). We estimated that the tuna may have weighed 20 kgs. Gavin's smile says it all. It was a tremendously exciting tussle with an excellent result.
And, of course, the evening meal was BBQ'd tuna (cooking_tuna). And appropriately, we had a bottle of bubbly to start with to celebrate Gavin's trophy catch and our gorgeous dinner (eating_tuna).
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