day 132: the old man and the sea
Miriam here, We write to you tonight from our anchorage at Kadavu Island near Nigoro Pass. The near shore is thick with mangroves and someone loud and squawky is lurking in the bushes. This was an early morning, Naomi clattering around and making us brews to bribe us out of bed to get under sail early enough to make the whole 50 mile passage during the day as both the inaccurate navigation application and the satellite image showed plenty of coral and rocks to avoid. Turning on the windlass motor to pull up the anchor we tripped the breaker several times until we blew the fuse (reason to be revealed later, stay tuned) and surprise! I got to start my day with the excellent workout of pulling the anchor by hand! 40 m of heavy chain plus another 10 m of thick rope and an anchor from 10 m of water. Felt like an accomplishment, I’ll see how my shoulders feel tomorrow. We changed out the jib as soon as we got going and still with all that managed to be well on our way by 7:30.
It was a thumpy bumpy crashing bashing sort of upwind sprint, waves coming over the bow to drench us in the cockpit just often enough to be surprising. The day was overcast and cool, a lovely temperature actually. I never imagined I’d be so welcoming to cloudy days in the tropics as I am now. I spent some time in my palatial new quarters and enjoyed being tossed around by the boat and the wind and the sea in a comfortably padded room, sort of like contact improv but with less control. We had an especially exciting afternoon that I will leave to another to tell and then pulled into this anchorage, solved the windlass mystery, settled in, made Robin cook again because delicious Indian food is irresistible, and now at the late hour of 8 pm are heading to bed any minute now.
Jamie: I turned out of bed in the morning to the sounds of cups clattering in the kitchen. I knew this meant only one thing. Someone was making me coffee. I quietly perched on the edge of my patio, peering out and glancing away when Naomi looked back at me. So it didn’t look so obvious I was waiting for a brew. It was a goodie. I sipped one third of it and then remembered what I had to do first thing that morning. I was going to dive on the anchor and unhook the chain from rocks as we pulled it up. I jumped in and did that. Miriam pulled up the anchor while I unhooked the snags at the bottom of the ocean floor. I jumped up, quite cold and was once again grateful for my sugary chocolatey coffee.
We had a good 5 hour passage over to this island with robin steering most of the way. I’m reading call of the wild by jack London so I was doing that down below after making a hearty pot of porridge. All of a sudden the fishing line starts whizzing out! I rush up and grab the fishing rod, all thoughts of the Klondike gold rush forced from my mind. As soon as I got the rod I realised line was going out very fast so I tightened the drag up slowly, carefully. Suddenly I caught movement in the water 60m away. MARLIN! I yelled we Hooked a marlin and increased the drag more. Everyone came up, we slowed the boat and furled the jib. We were so excited and hooting and hollering. The marlin stayed close to the surface and just kept jumping, it was incredible! I could see stripes on it (striped marlin?). I took back quite a bit of line at one point, when it was sort of swimming close to the boat. But it kept taking line out and I sensed it hadn’t really started running, it was just trying to shake the hook. It was such a buzz to fight it for a bit. Robin got a video of it! Our setup was far to light for this fish and we knew it. I could either let it take all the line out until the end and let it snap, or increase the drag to maximum now and let it snap to save some line (and secretly hope I might still land it somehow). Sure enough once the drag was on full it snapped. So cool anyway. Definitely felt bad to let it go with a hook in its mouth but if it can’t hunt at least something will eat it and it’s energy recycled. So the new lures from Tom work a treat! It’s re rigged now with stronger line. Next time we will be prepared. WOD: constellation. Constellation - a series of stars in a shape or group which have been assigned meaning by humankind? Used in a sen: although I didn’t get the gold, silver or bronze medal, I did receive a $50 fuel voucher as a constellation prize.
Bula from Robin, yes the Marlin was by far the highlight of the journey over here. I know people are always exaggerating the size of fish but this guy genuinely was as big as Naomi. The video I got is ok but since it was far away you can’t quite tell the scale which is why I repeat, as big as Nao!! Speaking of our captain, today Bluebird spoke to us over the Bluetooth speaker and commanded I attack Naomi with various sharp objects to reclaim my birthright as head of this vessel and sail her back to California where a sexy catamaran awaits their reunion. So I’m just biding my time. In other news, I made aloo gobi for dinner tonight. Back in Suva I got some dosa mix from the super market so I cooked up some crispy dosas to go with. As the saying goes, the first dosa wasn’t quite right but the ones after were much better! While I was cooking I watched several small Fijian fishing boats zip into a passage through the mangroves near our anchorage so very excited to explore that tomorrow. Until then, more book and salty sleep!
Naomi here Yes I made everyone cuppas this morning and then made them all do jobs before we could barely start sipping them, poor mims didn’t even get to start hers till after we changed the jib down ! And yes we do have sweet sweet cuppas, somehow at sea, you just need heaps of sugar to counteract the salt or something. In any case after all the excitement of the marlin which honestly was incredible to watch it jump and thrash about (it had eaten the lime green and yellow squid that Tom sent us , now we are trying out black and green double hook squid), and robin patiently guiding us through the minefield of reefs to get to our anchorage (this is very tricky, our navigation app is very inaccurate and the water colour combined with an overcast day makes the shallow reefs very difficult to see until we are almost too close to them), we very daringly chose to anchor in 80 feet of water. Normally we are able to find 25-30 feet and even then it is tricky to pull the anchor up by hand if the windlass HAPPENS to not be working. Or so I hear, someone has to be working the engine and it’s not my fault I happen to be good at putting the engine in gear. In any case I cheerfully gave the command to drop anchor in 80 feet despite the windlass not currently being functional, which is when we discovered what had been wrong with it - the dang anchor rode got so jammed in the windlass that the poor thing just busted the whole circuit breaker :( it got so jammed that we had to disassemble the whole gypsy which took a second and one of robins bobby pins to do. So we got the anchor rope unjammed and then we tested out the windlass by bypassing the circuit breaker which involves moving various objects to get into a little hatch in the side of the engine room and lean in at a very awkward angle to unscrew a nut and touch two wires together. The windlass uses a good amount of juice so of course we have the engine going right next to your head while this is happening and you can imagine what that does for ease of communications. Also I believe I saw a white necked petrel today altho to be perfectly honest it could of been any number of other types of petrels,it didn’t stick around long enough for a positive I.d., and also we saw a tropic bird, and either a booby with a yellow head, or a gannet??? Also something I have been mulling around in my head today. In Apataki boatyard we enjoyed looking at all the boats on the hard and considering how much more beautiful bluebird is. Amongst the usual boring boat names such as flight deck (?) were a couple goodies- One boat was called “oboe d’amoure” (oboe of love ??) and another , jambon buerre (ham butter ?) we found this equal parts entertaining and confusing. Imagine how we felt when a new neighbour pulled in next to us at Suva, a very different boat, also called jambon beurre ! Some googling revealed that ham butter is the name of an apparently delicious French sandwich, some urban dictionary googling further revealed it is a derogatory term for the bourgeois. In any case I cannot think of a sandwich I like enough to name my boat after it. But I have been wondering if there are any other delicious dishes worth the honour, perhaps robins aloo gobi?