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Peter Hogg, this one is for you!
August 27, 2007 - Day 49 17.7316N,133.1977W
Yesterday, I fell asleep reading inside the cabin. When I woke up later in the night, I was disoriented, music was on from the small loudspeaker I had connected to my MP3 player, the reading light was still pointing at my chest. The equivalent of falling asleep at home on the sofa in front of the TV! I was thirsty and had not brushed my teeth. Everything felt like a chore in my sleepy state. I turned off everything and went back to sleep.
By the morning, the boat had returned to a southwest course with a mild ENE wind. The skies were partially cloudy, temperature a balmy 27.6C (82F). The sea was undulating with 10 foot swells maybe 100 yards apart. The sea surface hardly had a ripple, and through that I saw a school of a dozen grey fish, round shaped with a flat body. Then I spotted my first dorato near the boat.
Doratos, also known as mahimahi, are a beautiful fish. They are aggressive and fast. They love to give a chase to flying fish. They have a distinct V-shape to their large tail, and have a dorsal fin which runs the length of their body. They shimmer in the water as they swim with hues of blue, grey, green and yellow.
Here was my chance to cast my line in front of a fish that I could see, rather than trolling a line as I rowed hoping a random fish would see it. Last time that I talked to our expert sailor friend Peter Hogg, he had good words for my progress. "You moved south nicely in the last week. You are doing very well..." "Thank you, Peter." "But, you know what?" I could sense the laughter welling up in him. "What?" "You are a lousy fisherman," he said with a belly laugh. I agreed. All I had pulled so far were debris from the sea. But today I had my chance...
Then I saw the rest of the doratos - maybe six or eight of them were swimming lazily, keeping pace with my boat at about 10 yards. I tossed my lure in their midst, and swiftly collected the line. None bit, but I got their attention. Terry Schmitt had brought this shiny chromed lure to one of our photo sessions at the Corinthian Yacht Club, saying: "keep this with you, it worked for us every time while sailing," as he had handed it to me.
I noticed on the second try that the doratos got more excited with the splash than with my pull on the lure. It was as if a flying fish had landed. On my fourth try, I knew I had their number: I was going to cast the lure in their midst and start pulling as soon as it splashed in the water.
I did just that and saw a dorato change course, turn to its left and dart toward my lure. From the glare on the water, I could not follow all the action but I felt the tug on the line. "Gotcha!" I thought to myself, hand over hand collecting the line. The dorato did not fight until I lifted it out of the water. I waited some for it to weaken while hanging on the boat's side. Then I pulled it on deck.
I had been given the tip that a little alcohol poured on the gills of a large catch like a dorato or a tuna, tames it. One of the items to go last on the boat, was a small plastic water bottle full of plain vodka. I poured about three cap fulls of the stuff inside one gill of the dorato and it slowly stopped beating its tail.
I cleaned it, and boiled chunks of it with the skin still on. The scales of the dorato are so fine, that when I removed the boiled morsels from the pot, I could easily peel back the skin. This was the first time that I used my gimballed stove, and my pot on this crossing. I keep using a handheld stove to simply boil water for my Mountain House freeze dried ready meals.
I ate half of the morsels as a late breakfast, then stored the rest in an empty Mountain House pouch. They were good for a late lunch, but I did not have the appetite for the last morsel. It went back to sea, for lack of refrigeration. I would dry and keep a portion of the meat from a larger fish like the yellow fin tuna - I do not like to waste any of my catch.
Erden.
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My first real catch on this crossing!
