Fishing - Feats and Defeats

	The 20-pound mahi mahi we caught. Great fish!

We usually troll with two hand lines set about 100 feet behind the boat. Al makes the lure with "tuna heads" and plastic bag skirts. At noon one day both the lines popped their alarms, then went slack. Thought, "Darn, lost 'em." But no--great splashes astern as the lines pulled tight again. We had hooked 2 striped marlin! Well, that's not what we fish for, and we hoped they would spit the hook. The smaller marlin got off while Al was hauling it toward the boat; the larger we had to bring alongside and cut the leader to free him. Later that afternoon we hooked another marlin! This one splashed and tail danced and threw the hook. Whew. Now you know, those big game fishermen pay thousands of dollars for the gear to go out and try to hook a marlin. And here we are with our homemade lures, on hand lines, and we get 3 in one afternoon!

Another day we did manage to hook a food fish--a 20-pound mahi-mahi; a real beauty. We had fish for dinner and fish for lunch for three days in a row, plus 6 packets of mahi for the freezer.

Radio Reports

There are a ton of yachts heading west this year, more than I remember from the past 2 or 3 seasons. Each yachtie group seemed to set up a radio schedule on the SSB, which got very confusing if you had friends in more than one group. In the end we just stuck to our basic schedules on the ham radio: Rowdy's Net in the morning, as Richard does an excellent job giving out weather, and the Indian Ocean Net in the late afternoon to give Roy our position. We also had a midday SSB sched with several good friends also heading for Chagos. The big problem was going through 2 time zones, changing the clocks, and then trying to remember when to do the radio!

It seems I was arbitrarily selected to "host" the midday group, to take positions and weather conditions and reports of shipping, fishing, problems, and mischief aboard. This I called the BBBBBCC--the Bay of Bengal Boaters and Boasters Broadcasting Cruisers Company! It was something to look forward to each day.

Problems

Not a lot this time. The fix-it list grew with the number of days at sea, as always, but mostly with little items. The one major gear failure was with our MPS sail; the clew ring broke. This looks to be caused by crevice corrosion in the stainless steel where the big ring was welded together. Anyway, the sail went a-flutter, but was captured into the sock and lowered without damage to the sail. The snap shackle at the end of the sheet rocketed back into the side of the boat, making a ding that will have to be patched and touched up. We have a sizable D ring which we can install into the clew patch.

Things that go thump in the night. It did. ONE BIG THUMP. But dull sounding, not like hitting the wreck, or like hitting a log that then bumps on down the side. There was this tic-tic-tic noise too that continued after the thump. We ran around the boat frantically trying to track down the noise and ended up in the forward area by the head when it stopped. A whale? We'd seen them in that area before. Al had seen a big swirl in the water astern of us. What we suspect though, is a fishing net: the thump when we hit the cable, the swirl when we almost stopped, the tic-tic-tic of the net floats tapping the hull until we had power enough to sail free of the cable. Thank goodness the cable didn't lodge between the keel and the skeg!

One afternoon a fishing boat came up to us, circled, and then followed us, making motions to indicate coming alongside. It was about 40 feet long and had 5 men aboard. Listen, you don't know just how vulnerable you feel out in the middle of nowhere in a situation like that. We don't carry fire arms aboard. Al told me to get the machete up into the cockpit. He drove an evasive course and I motioned the boat to go away. Which they finally did. Our friends on COLUMBUS were also approached by a fishing boat that followed them for 3 hours! They finally lost them in a big squall that came down with heavy rain.

Arrival at Addu

Once again it was going to be a race between us arriving in Addu and the sun going down. We didn't fancy heaving to for the night outside the pass. The pass through the reef is quite wide and danger-free, and there would be a big full moon, but...So we elected to motor at 5.5K instead of sailing at 3K during the calm hours of the early morning, and again around noon, until the afternoon breezes filled in better. Good sailing then, coupled with about 1K of favorable current, put us over the edge and at anchor by 6pm.

Bless that current. Not only did it get us to Addu before sun down, but the total accumulation of miles in the voyage meant we saved more than a day on the passage time. What's another day at sea? You never know. The morning following our arrival it was blowing a steady 20 to 25 knots with gusts to 35 in squalls, with lots of rain. Good to be tucked into the anchorage through all that. Plus, the rain washed away the salt spray, filled all the buckets to do the laundry, and replenished the water we had used from our tanks.