Position: 05 degrees, 05 minutes north; 146 degrees, 44 minutes west 120 nm day

Tuna!

Poisson cru day started at sunup. As soon as there was some light, like the seabirds that fish in the early dawn, I let the hand line slip out with a blue and pink squid lure on the end. I read that if you aren’t catching with one lure, sometimes it’s because you need to go with lighter tackle. Fish, tuna in particular can see really well. I was using a lure I’d made up that used wire as a leader, so I thought, “why not go lighter?”. The leader was only about 60 lb test, but I recently put a really long bungee on to absorb shock.

So, I’m sitting in the cockpit watching the clouds form, forgetting about the fishing line, when; “SLAP”, I heard the clothespin hit the deck. That’s our signal. I reached over to test the line and sure enough something heavy was out there. Now my conundrum was do I wake Ann two hours before the end of her off-watch or try and land whatever it is by myself? What the heck. So, I took my time setting up the gaff, knife and the rope I use to tie the fish so it won’t get away once landed. Then, on go the gloves and I start pulling in. At first it wasn’t too hard, but then the fish sensed what was going on and started to run out. Good thing for the gloves! Got him to the boat and…a tuna! Ann adores tuna – she’s kinda like a puppy with a new tennis ball when she sees one. Boy is she going to be excited! (And I was! – Ann)

Anyway, the hardest part was gaffing it by myself to get it aboard, but I finally did that and the rest, well, the hard work starts after landing it. Cleaning and filleting a large (about three foot, twenty pound) fish on a very rolly deck is a lot of work, but after about an hour we had a small bucket full of fish. Then down in the galley to finish cutting it into steaks and bagging them into portions and we’re almost done. Ah, the poisson cru. Cut the tuna into small ¼ inch pieces, chop whatever veggies you have – in our case we still have a few tomatoes and a cucumber – chop half a red onion then mix it all, add coconut crème just so it almost covers the fish and squeeze a little lime juice. Yum! We had a couple crackers with it at lunch and are going to have more at Charisma time tonight.

The other event of the day is we entered the ITCZ. For the first time in over a week, the sky has clouded over and we have cumulus clouds and rain building all around us. Looking around you see all these mushroom shaped clouds surrounding us like so many small atomic bomb blasts. So far just some rain and bumpy waves. Hope it stays that way.