Fallen Angel
25 September 2013 | Turtle Cay, Panama
Ooroo breaths a new life after hundreds of man hours and about $20,000 of new equipment and wiring. I have Skip to thanks for taking the time to fly down to Panama to curl up into small hot places and meticulously re-wire all that was damaged in the lightening strike. I got the fun jobs....hours up the mast, connecting wires Skip had run and finally turning on the power.
But we have time for other things now and so with the arrival of Oli back on board we are starting to play, or at least getting the gear together we need to pay with. I just increased my fishing rod collection by retrieving my Penn rod and real I accidentally dropped overboard 4 months ago. We had several days of clear weather so Oli and I went a searching. We found it in minutes just hanging onto the side of a coral cliff in about 4 meters. Encrusted in barnacles and slime, it only took a few hours to get her cleaned, oiled and rigged. We now have three trolling lines and a casting rod.
Xavier is teaching me to spear fish and so with a lobster spear gun and a powerfull 75cm spear gun we started racking up some kills (meals). Xavier always returns with at least one big snapper. My count with as many outings is a large lobster, lion fish, small snapper, medium barracuda and a large blue angelfish. The Angelfish presented itself so perfectly that I shot her, immediately regretting that I had. What a beautiful fish.
She got her revenge. While cleaning her a hidden spike speared my finger. Thinking not much of it at the time, my finger swelled so a couldn't make a fist. Two days latter my lymph glands under my armpit inflamed and became very painful. After a week and a course of antibiotics the pain moved to the shoulder muscles and stared sending tingles down my spine. It took two weeks for the glands to reduce, but meanwhile the muscle pain started to migrate down the spine and now, almost four weeks latter I have a coin sized bump half way down my spine that doesn't want to go away....the angel still sends little tickles up and down my spine just to show she is an angel after all.
Mr. Google didn't even reveal that the fish has a powerful toxin in its spines. And the angel didn't even taste that good.
So with the boat and me now fit to sail, we plan on a departure back to San Blas four and a half months after the strike. They say lightening doesn't strike twice in the same place so I know exactly where to anchor....and as far as angelfish are concerned....that isn't about to happen again either.