crossing day 1: there are monsters living under our boat
Lat: N16’25”2691
Lon:W26’35”7966
Avg speed: 5.6 kts
Wind : 4 to 20 kts
Temp : 26c during the day , cold (23) during the night
About 24 hours ago we said goodbye to Mindelo Cabo Verde and started our crossing to French Gyana. We set of with quite a bit of wind due to the wind acceleration zone between the islands and before we knew it we made good progress. I thought this would be a great moment to catch some dinner and lo and behold after 20 minutes we had a “hit” , when I tried to gently reel it in I found out that whatever was on the other end of the line didnt feel like being “gently pulled in” and decided to make a run for it ! Fiddling with my reel to put on the brakes the kind creature on the other end decided to just make a run for it and while doing so broke the rod in 2 ! The handle (thickest part of the rod) that was still in the rod hold just buckled and snapped under the pressure . So bye bye monster number 1 ! I hope your lip will heal
Quite shaken and surprised , looking at Joline with a sheepish smile , i decided to rig up our other rod, this time with a brand new deep diving 25cm rapala lure.. no pussy footing around , if there’s big fish they deserve big lures , a bigger rod and the big reel. So off it goes into the big deep blue. After about 20 minutes we get another hit on it ! And the race is on.. quite a one sided race I may add as the 2nd monster just took the lure , most of my line amd just kept swimming away ! So having lost 2 lures and 1 rod within the hour I am quite fed up with this loosing battle so i fit the smallest lure i have, small lures = small fish , right ? Yup , thats what i thought as well untill i get a hit and see a 1.8-2 meter monster of the yellow and green variety (Mahi Mahi) just below the surface and taking off ! So the battle is on again ! Or so I thought… so putting the brake on the big reel on the big rod resulted in a broken big rod .. the damn fishy just broke my big rod in 2! And took off with the lure
So the score for now ‘sea monsters’ 3 – ‘expert deep sea fisherman’ zilch .. less than zilch actually as i am running low on lures and have no more spare rods 🙁
After that brief and boring interlude I had enough and we sailed into the night and evening , with very confused seas , spotty winds and a night without any real sleep
Hopefully the coming days are a bit better , both on the catching and sleeping fronts