The good news is that I am not going to get keel hauled…
The bad news is that none of us have Tuna in our bellies…
oh, the disappointment…
During the Victoria to Maui sailboat race I partook in last summer, Fraser (who is the veteran of a 30,000 mile, 7 year circumnavigation with his family), let me know of a right clever way to clean a fish: Haul it on deck (not so easy with a slippery, spiny, slimy and muscular fish like a Tuna), stab it between the eyes (again, not so easy with a slippery, slimy and muscular fish like a tuna, that is bucking around like a bull with mad cow disease, and while all you are trying to do is not loose the fish, fall overboard or cut off a finger, let alone hit a target as small as a Tuna eye), slit it from anus to belly (again, not so… never mind, you get the picture), tie a line through it’s gills and then drag it behind the boat for a while as it self cleans. BRILLIANT! Brilliant? Not so much. Fraser, if you are reading this, I have discovered through trial and error, that this must be a sub 6kt’s technique. Khulula is ripping along at 10 kt’s currently, having just clocked off 195 nautical miles (355 km) as the crow flies in the previous 24 hours! This is an absolutely fantastic feeling, and we are still absolutely flying along, but this speed is not so applicable to the self cleaning of a Tuna.
So here I am below decks with a grin on my face, smelling like fish, mixing powdered Wasabi (thank you Laurie Roggeman!) and Soy Sauce, as my Tuna happily self-cleans behind the boat. JUST as I was putting the finishing touches to our sashimi dipping sauce, I hear a “OH NO!” from above deck. I didn’t even need to ask to know that our self cleaning tuna had set itself free, and here I was high and dry, clutching our bowl of Wasabi and soy sauce, with no tuna to consume..
sigh…
Oh well, I have it nailed now. Let’s just call that a dry run, a practice, so to speak. The tuna out here obviously don’t like the white lures (we figure it just looks like a piece of foam in our wake), but are REALLY interested in nice green and yellow ones! A nice green and yellow lure was deployed less than an hour before the successful snag. So watch this space, I am going to catch a more bigger and more better Tuna, and this time by golly, we are going to eat it!!!
sigh…
At least we’ll do another 150+ miles today, the wind is showing no signs of abating at all! wahooo!! 5 days to the Marquesas at this rate! Other news is that we just realised that the sun was getting up really late, and going down really early. Could we have just crossed a time zone? How do we even calculate that? OK, so 360 degrees in a circle and 24 hours in a day mean that 15 degrees = 1 hour! So out comes the map, and we are exactly slap bang 15 degrees longitude west of Cabo San Lucas. We have adjusted all the ships clocks accordingly: I am typing this email at 1430, not 1530, but most definitely at 2230 UTC.
Hugest hugest thanks to Thea Roggeman and Jess Robertson for getting all these postings up on the website. We hear from all sources that you guys are doing a great job! Thea, I miss you tonnes, and can’t wait to see you in September!