SAILING TO TONGA
Thursday 10th April
It is now 4:45am, I’m on watch but as there is basically no wind,
we are motoring and there is very little to do obviously. The sea is wonderfully calm and the starry
sky spectacular, I have been able to see Venus out one side and what I believe
to be Mars on the other. We get some
great night skies back home while out camping, but out here takes it up a notch
with no other lights to contend with.
Later that morning, not long after George had just gotten out of
bed, one of the first things he says is ‘oh, I can smell you just had a
smoke’. Once again real casually, like
he is simply stating a fact, not whinging about it. I quickly replied just as matter of factly
‘Well I can smell that you just took a shit, but I didn’t feel it necessary to
comment about it’! I think he got the
hint.
Friday 11th April
It is now 4:30pm and I am on watch again, the sea is calm and we
have been under motor since around 12am this morning. The night watch was awesome really,
beautifully calm water and the engine running meant I could just sit and watch
downloaded media on my laptop! It is
obviously not ideal to be going slower and using the engines, but it is
enjoyable and very relaxing.
Extremely bummed out earlier today though, at around 6am this
morning I noticed a couple of bumps on my rod I had trolling, so went over to
investigate. As I picked it up I saw a
huge hit as my lure was engulfed and I was on to a monster! But this left me standing on the back deck
with a very solid fish on and nobody awake to cut the motors!
This fish was off into the distance at a blistering rate, my reel
screaming as I tried to wake the others up to come turn the boat around and
chase this bastard down. Just as
Jean-Paul came on deck I was busted off, one of my favourite lures and who
knows, possibly one of the best fish I have hooked, gone forever….
I wasted no time in getting another lure out and around an hour
later we saw a black fin just behind the boat, only 20 seconds later and my
reel was screaming again! A billfish for
sure, but as I picked the rod up and went to set the hook, he dropped it as
quick as he had nailed it, no hook-up.
F*#@! On the plus side, George
hasn’t really done anything major to piss me off so far today. Oh that’s right, I have barely talked to him!
We still have about 409 nm to reach Minerva
Reef, where apparently we may spend a couple of nights if time permits. Woohoo! At this rate we are looking at
arriving Monday
