Our skewed luck with fishing continues. Just before dawn I put two lines out. That’s all we do these days as when we have four out we often get tangles. Within an hour one nut dropped then the other. The first line was loose but the second was quite tight. Something was on it. With Helen getting the knives and tethers out I hauled the beastie in. As I brought the fish close to the boat I saw it was a Shortbill Spearfish somewhat larger than the Wahoo caught (and lost) the previous evening. We woke John to get involved once I had it aboard. It was about 5 feet long and I reckon must have weighed about 30 odd pounds given that the Wahoo had weighed in at 20. Unfortunately, as the fish reached the wash at the foot of the steps it shook itself free of the lure. It too was gone but free to fight another day.
In hindsight this was perhaps for the best. If we’d have killed and butchered it we’d have far more fish meat than we’d eat in months. We’d be happy to give some away but I’m happier the creature is free to roam the ocean.
Just before lunch we had two more near simultaneous hits on the lines. This time we had fish on each. John and I hauled them in. Mine got away but John landed his. It was a Skipjack Tuna. We still have some fillets of that in the freezer so we let it go.
We had two more strikes in the day but neither resulted in a fish on the line. There are some big beasties out there. We hope we can land a decent sized tuna one day soon.
The wind in general remains in our favour. It occasionally dies down a bit and varies direction quite regularly by 10-20 degrees keeping our attention on trimming. We’re still due to arrive about 10-12 hours before we can enter the atoll at slack tide. This would be on day 4. If we’re still making this kind of progress on day 3 we’ll deliberately slow down. For now we’re regenerating more than we would normally and using the microwave to heat soup, etc. which we don’t normally do.
It’s looking more likely that our second son, Ben, will join us aboard before we leave French Polynesia and probably remain until we get to New Zealand. While this means we have to surrender notions of us sailing the Pacific as a couple this year we’re more than happy to have Ben join us. The only problem is our supplies of beer/wine are not sufficient for all of us and costs are unknown, probably expensive, this side of New Zealand.
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