November 29, 2009
Aboard No Boundaries
This day was extremely busy. Some of you may think that cruising is an endless vacation, but I will say again what I have said before: it is much more like an expedition. We never stop discovering new things, and we never stop learning.
We had run overnight from Motts Channel near Wrightsville, NC, and were out beyond twenty nautical miles when the sun rose this morning. We are getting better at our management of overnights. We still operate on two-hour watches, but we sometimes creep up on three hours, which is our ultimate goal. No matter what the plan, we both need a nap during the day sometime, but on this day, there was no time for that. It may be the wise and prudent thing to do, but we were busy learning other things.
We have been dragging a line for fish any time we are outside the territorial waters. We hadn’t had much luck, and Larry was pretty discouraged. Today, however, just as I was about to serve breakfast, Larry shouted, “We have a fish!” I set the oatmeal back on the burner so it would stay warm, then I ran up to see the sight.
What a beautiful fish. If fish weren’t such great food, it would really be hard to kill one. This fish was gorgeous, as you will see in the photos on the website. As fish in the sea go, he was a mere baby, but compared to the perch and sunfish I remember catching and eating in my childhood, he was a giant.
We already knew that we didn’t really want to club him to death. That seems pretty barbaric, and other cruisers have suggested a better way; they pour rum on the gills and the fish simply goes to sleep happy. In our confusion, we wound up using bourbon, and Larry’s method may arouse suspicions that the choice was somewhat self-serving. He took a swig of the bourbon, then sprayed it into the gills. It really looks primitive, but it worked. (And the fisherman gets even happier.) I think that the next time I am in Walmart for supplies, I will pick up a small spray bottle. Then we can buy some really cheap rum and fill the spray bottle with it. That plan should achieve the goal without risking that the captain would go to sleep right along with the fish in his sleep-deprived state after an overnight run.
Sending the fish to that great reef in the sky was the first step, but then we had to prepare the fish for eating. This fish was just under a yard long, larger than any containers or cutting boards we had available. We had a good filet knife, but neither of us is skilled with it. I hope we catch more fish in the future, and if we do, we should get better at this.
In the end, we had four nice filets, and a lot of bones plus the head. Having heard numerous chefs deplore the idea of throwing away bones and head that could be used to make a flavorful broth for soup, I decided to test that idea. My conclusion: it is a lot more work than the amount of food to be gained by it, and the boat smells severely of fish processing. In the future, we will take the filets and exercise our stewardship of the remaining meat on the carcass by feeding other fish.
So far this fish has provided three meals. We grilled one filet for lunch on the day we caught the fish, and that was the most delightful tuna I ever put in my mouth. We ate the soup I made with fish broth for dinner, but neither of us thought it was too delightful. I made a third dinner by slicing the filet into medallions which I seasoned with lemon pepper and seared on my iron griddle. That dinner was good, but nothing to compare with the very fresh grilled tuna. We still have two filets in the freezer for a couple more meals.
Our morning was very much occupied with carving up and managing the fish. We stayed pretty focused until that job was done. We went below to wash up and then Larry went back up on deck. I went forward to brush my teeth. I was just finishing up when Larry knocked on the hatch cover above my head. I looked up, and he waved for me to come up on deck. I ran to the cockpit and stepped out. Larry put a finger to his lips for me to be silent and pointed to the water beside the boat.
There was a dolphin, swimming along beside us. I tip-toed forward to get a better look. The dolphin dived down and began a series of movements that appeared to me as if he were rubbing his back on the keel of the boat. He came up from time to time to get a breath and then went right back down.
Soon this lone dolphin was joined by three friends. One of the dolphins had a nick in his fin that looked as if he might sometime have crowded a prop, but he didn’t seem to be impeded in his enjoyment of the fun. In fact, Larry thinks that he somehow pushed his tale against the keel and let the boat do all the work of propelling him forward.
I don’t know exactly how any of them did it, but they all seemed to stay with the boat effortlessly. In fact, there were times that I had the impression they fell away from the boat and let it get ahead just so they could chase it and catch up again. We watched these four for more than an hour before they began to drop off.
This was only the beginning. All day dolphins came running over. From far away we saw them leaping and hurrying and racing toward the boat. You could almost hear them shout, “A boat! A boat!” Each time a single dolphin caught up with us, it was only a short time before he was joined by others. At one point there were eight of them crowded around the bow of the boat. We could not tear ourselves away. Larry took more than one hundred photos. It was an amazing experience.
This is the sort of thing that makes cruising so delightful. This is an adventure that is exponentially more exciting than seeing dolphins in an aquarium. These wonderful sea creatures honored us by visiting us and joyfully sharing their fun with us. We could not ask for more of any day in our lives.
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