Tag: fishing

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Fish guttin’ bikini

Enroute Avarua, Rarotonga, Cook Islands

Greg is not a big fan of traditional fishing.  Not because it hurts the fish (as my friend Paul once said “if God didn’t want us to eat animals, why are they made of meat?”), not because he doesn’t like fish (bit of a sushi freak actually, except in Mexico) but because, as Tiffany so aptly put it, “There is a reason it’s called fishing and not catching.”

Look, normal fishing is boring.  Greg needs something else to keep him occupied.  Which is why shipboard deep sea fishing is so perfect for him.  The philosophy behind fishing on a sailboat is actually rather simplistic:  take a hook, attach it to a line, drag it behind the boat while you’re transiting.  Some people don’t even bother with a rod and just go straight hand line.  Greg is completely down with this style of fishing because it actually allows us to get something else done and sometimes you get to participate in “catching” without wasting your whole day staring at a line in the water.  Only downside is that the ‘sometimes’ is not as often as one would think.

In Mexico we had some really good fishing off of the Baja Coast. 

And we nabbed two fish at once sailing to La Cruz 

But ever since we started sailing towards Tahiti pickings have been somewhat…slim.

For the past 3 MONTHS.

Now you can justify that pretty easily.  As we’ve established, the Pacific is a big place and it’s mostly empty.  So, logically, there aren’t very many fish out here compared to the size of the ocean and most of the fish out here aren’t just hanging around; usually they are migrating from one place to another.

All this adds up to deepwater fishing underway being a mixed bag and, to understate the fact, an extremely unreliable means of providing substance for one’s crew.

But baby when it hits, it hits big!

And that’s exactly what happened a few days sail out of Bora Bora.  In the dead middle of nowhere.

Catching a fish is a huge boost to crew morale.  A big mahi-mahi like that will provide a great fresh barbeque under the stars and they don’t get any fresher than flopping on your stern!  Now imagine how we felt when we realized we had actually stumbled into a school of them: Continue reading “Fish guttin’ bikini”

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All that’s missing is a Kracken

Despite our best fishing efforts, pickings continue to be rather slim

 

 

(If you watched that…I apologize.  My only defense is that when you’re this long out to sea some things seem funnier than they are.)

 

We did manage to hook a deepwater fish.  Before parting the strongest line we had onboard, our finned friend hung around long enough to make sure I received an extensive education why I need to keep my big mouth shut when I think about talking smack about a sport I know nothing about.

 

 

What’s on the dinner menu for Greg?  Looks like a double portion of humble pie.

 

To pile on the humiliation, it appears that my role as a B-movie sci-fi horror flick victim was prophetic in nature.  Either that or the booby birds have enlisted the help of their fellow sea creatures.  Either way, the ship’s cockpit is becoming a nightly target for the beasts of the sea.

 

 

In that video I mention the term ITCZ.  This is sailor slang for Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone.  Basically it’s this place where all the horrible weather from the northern hemisphere has gigantoid WWE style thrown downs with all the horrible weather from the southern hemisphere.  If you take Michael Jackson’s music video “beat-it” replace the street thugs with rain squalls and take out the really cool dancing and hit music single, you have a good idea what it’s like.

 

Despite seemingly every creature of the briny deep, with the notable exception of an actual edible fish, deciding to make our ship their vacation home, morale remains high.  Just a few days ago we took solace in the stoic example of Captain James T. Kirk as we conducted another installment of our mandatory ships training regimen.

 

 

Even though we have not seen dry land for weeks, we remain confident God has not flooded you all out of house and home.

 

 

That’s a Bible reference yo.  Noah, from that first book.  Told you I was listening to it.

 

-Greg

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The truth about food on boats

We dine like gods out here!

To give you an idea, I offer for your consideration this typical evening “crew ration”

Stuffed peppers, avocado, fresh tomato salad and hand-made garlic bread… All par for the course for our dining experience (trust me, were you here you would not dare to dishonor the glory of our consumption rituals by addressing them as “meals” either).  Any fool who told you that people lose weight on long voyages was either a liar or someone who did not give proper respect to the culinary creation process.  Translation:  they did not have a duty cook, which is one of the major advantages of having more than 2 people on your boat.

In this sailor’s opinion, Allan probably made the best call of his ship captaining career when he took our advice of assigning a duty cook.  He actually did it cunningly well.  We have 2 duty rotations each 12 hours in length: Day watch and night watch.  During night watch, each of us stands a 3 hour and during the day watch, three of us stand a 4 hour shift and the 4th person’s sole responsibility for the day is to make sure the rest of us eat meals that would make Bacchus envious.  Tiffany and Alison typically take this burden on and they have done a fantastic job.   The reason for this is that Allan and I have both stated that Ramen noodles and a can of coke every night sounds like a fun experiment.  Alison agreed with this idea, however her idea of Ramen noodles is a travesty of college gourmet cooking.

Back to the duty cook thing.  The real advantage here is that the cook easily spends 4 hours (the length of a watch) preparing lunch and dinner.  Everyone realizes this, so none of the other watchstanders feel like the cook is shirking duty.  Also, because the cook doesn’t have to worry about a watch during the day, they can spend a lot of time creating excellent meals, despite having to deal with problems straight out of Das Boat:

Also, this way no one gets overworked between standing watches and preparing meals.

The cooks almost got a fresh sushi reprieve when we landed our first fish of the trip until we realized it wasn’t a good “eating” fish (what the heck else are fish good for!?)

– Greg

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