Costa Rica

Sailing with Dummies (California to Texas, Day 20)

Sunday, June 28, 2009

by Mike

It’s been raining a lot on the way to Cocos Island. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 96% of the time. Of course, part of the time it’s only sprinking, but that still counts as rain.

Fishing Report:

We started out the day with a 15-pound dolphin. It was raining too hard to clean it, so we practiced our catch and release techniques. Next Fullerton brought in a 10-pound dolphin. This time we were in light rain so we killed it and cleaned it.

Late in the afternoon Bob slowed the engines and started reeling in a good one. So good, in fact, that it started jumping out of the water. It was some sort of bill fish and looked just like they used to on Wide World of Sports. Bob kept after it for a long time. Luckily we had the sails down at the time and could stop quickly, or it wouldn’t have been on long.

“Bob quit screwing around and catch that thing,” I said after about an hour. It was getting dark.

Thirty minutes later Fullerton had the spotlight pointed to the end of the pole and we all were wearing headlights, Bob was playing the fish (or playing with the fish), and I was trying to follow the fish around with the boat.

“Turn 40 degrees left and back up,” Bob would say, “now thirty right. This fish is fast. Now forward!” I couldn’t see the line in the dark, so I was just driving blindly. Kind of like driving a minivan?

Thirty minutes later the fish was up near the boat, tired out, but still much stronger than any of us. After lots of effort (lots of failures) I finally got a sailing rope tied around its tail. We winched it up on the steps. Then we rejoiced, puffed our chests out, took pictures, touched the fish, and measured it.

It measured 115” long (9 feet, 7 inches). A blue marlin. A beast!

Then we let it go. It twitched a couple of times and then swam off like nothing was wrong. Catch and release. That’s what fishermen do.

Fine Dining:

We ate the dolphin. The actual name of the dish was “Sautéed Mahi-mahi in spices ala New Orleans.” The potatoes went down good with the fried fish!

Fine Arts:

In the lull between catching fish I treated Bob and Fullerton to some fine art. I hooked my electric guitar into the ship-wide stereo and started wailing. It was great!

One problem was some electronic noise, kind of like feedback only high-pitched and constant and loud. Fullerton thought it sounded like a carbon monoxide detector going off. I thought it added to the experience. After 20 minutes my fingers got sore and I ended the performance.

They were still sitting there, outside, when the big fish bit.