Road Kill
Rhiann Marie - Round the World
Stewart Graham
Thu 8 Apr 2010 17:41
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Thursday April 8th 1008 Local
1708UTC
03:52.01S 099:43.21W
We know you are fed up with stories of the one that
got away, and the other day we had two spectacular strikes from blue marlin
none of which we landed.
But yesterday, always it seems at the same time
each day, between 5 and 6 local time, we had an unbelievable strike from an
absolute monster. He was between 6 and 8 feet long and was leaping from and
thrashing the water. We fought him for about 10 - 15 minutes or so. It took
both Angus and I to hold the rod with it in the waist hoslter on me! We think on
this occasion we did everything right. We let him run, and we slowed the boat
down by first turning dead down wind to blank the genny and furl it then turning
up to wind with the main still right out and prevented. This put us in a kind of
"hove to" position while Angus wrestled with the rod on the after deck. As he
did, up the fish came again and slammed back down sideways before taking another
couple of hundred yards of line. When we were down to 50 metres or so of line we
daren't let him run again so we played him as best we could without tightening
or slackening the tension on the reel. He was unbelievably strong and when he
finally made a run for it he snapped our line. Our hearts still beat quickly
just thinking about it.
After re-rigging the rod and new lures we had
another similar but shorter experience 15 minutes later. Thinking about it now
we have no idea how we would get these guys aboard if we could get them along
side, but I am going to re-read a couple of paragraphs in the book "Of whales
and men" from the 1950's to see if we can rig some sort of winch arrangement to
get these baby's up our (newly designated) ster ramp. First we need to get one
along side............
The night was great and the only downside
is that the nightwatch is now my business day, so e-mails and so on need to
be attended to which is not quite as pleasant as studying the Southern
skies and dreaming up 50 new ways to eat giant marlin - but hey I'm not
complaining because frankly it's not a bad office and the views are spectacular.
The wobbly floor, "floating" keyboard, sleep deprivation and humdity however are
the reasons for the speling and gammatical errors not lack of education.
Yesterday for the fifth or sixth time since we
started our circumnavigation we could not get a satellite connection and I had
the scary thought that if we could not get a connection all this blog writing
and e-mails would stop suddenly/ That in itself is indeed not a problem however
the sudden break in connectivity may cause alarm at home. Should we suffer from
a loss of connectivity which is possible as it is all computer based, do not
panic! Our ETA is about 23rd/24th April in Hiva Oa in the Marquesas. Probably of
more concern to some of you from th efeedback I have been getting is that there
would be no blog! Dont worry I would post them all once software
fixed.....
If however you hear the EPIRB ........ well thats a
different story and one that we have a plan in place for so dont panic then
either!
We are losing fruit and food fast on this passage
so far. We dont know why it should be any worse than the atlantic but it breaks
my heart to throw fruit and veg over the side. Today I was chopping up our last
pineapple which was absolutely putrid so over it went. Trish looked out our
fruit bag this morning and the melon actually burst! What a mess. We have plenty
supplies so will be fine but as a safety precaution today we are eating the
"road kill" from last night.
We had another 10 small squid so I prepared
them for lunch along with our last catch which was a bonito and in the
freezer.
Currently sailing 9 knots pointing at the
Marquesas. Fantastic.
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