Hooray ... a Wahoo!
12 January 2009 | South Atlantic
The Crew
The last few days have been slow going with little or no wind. We have been flying the spinnaker all day and night as we have a near full moon and it's still easily controllable. We have had both lines out but nothing caught since we left St Helena. Still we have lots of long fin tuna left but were hoping for a Dorado which is very good and normally caught on this leg. On Sunday evening the wind was beginning to build and so we decided to set the spinnaker again. We noticed that both lines had been triggered. We brought them in and all looked well and so put he lines out again. The trigger is a clothes peg on a piece of bungy cord. No sooner had we set the lines than we heard the unmistakable 'ping' as the clothes peg snapped shut. We had two big ones hooked that was for sure. John and Adrian began the task of pulling them in as Jackie and Luke were called to help. Both fish were diving deep and this is not what is expected of a Dorado. We soon discovered we had hooked two Skipjack tuna. One got away but the other was successfully landed. After about 30 minutes of filleting and bagging the fish for the freezer we put just one of the lines out and within seconds we had another fish on the line. Hoping that it was not another tuna we were delighted that it was a small Wahoo. Adrian had tried this fish in St Helena and it is regarded as a very really good fish to eat. The lines will not be put back out until we have some more room in the freezer and it's Wahoo for supper tonight. All is well on board and today is Monday. The wind has increased and we are making better progress.