Once uppon a time came a fish

In Charleston SC, we were tied up to the Mega Dock (yup that’s it’s official name), it is 2500ft long. There were so many huge boats there. Some even had golf carts that went with them. Crazy! Needless to say L’Attitude felt a little small. It didn’t matter though, we didn’t stay long. We had some ocean sailing to do, finally.

We left first thing in the morning. We got out into the ocean and there was no wind. Who would have thought of the ocean as flat and calm. We put up the sails anyways (it makes the boat look prettier) and motor sailed. The wind picked up enough to keep the sails full but not enough to keep us moving at a good speed.

As we made our way, we were almost 40 nautical miles (nautical miles are just over 1.2 regular miles) away from land. At 2 different occasions, we were visited by little birdies. I don’t know how they made it out so far. One kept sliding on the deck as the boat heeled.

Now that the boat is heading to its waypoint 25 hours away, what do you do? You fish, of course. Josh and I put out our trolling line all the while having a discussion about what the right speed is to fish at. Like either of us knows anything about fishing. We now know what is a good speed to catch fish at is, 7 knots. All of a sudden I feel something tug on the line. I try to reel it in but I can’t do it. So I pass the rod to the muscle on board. I, in the meantime, take the radio and proudly announce that I caught a fish. After my very bold statement, Josh says, I don’t think there’s a fish at the end of the line!

But he was wrong. There was a fish … a very big fish hooked on our line. I ran around the boat getting stuff ready to get the fish. I got the net, the fish book (to know if we could eat it or if we should let it go), the camera (so people will believe that we caught a fish) and the bottle of rum. Why the rum you ask? Apparently it will kill the fish if you pour it down its gills. It seemed a little more humane and less messy.

At this point the fish is at the boat and we can that it’s huge. I’d say that it was at least 1 meter long, no fish stories! Josh somehow manages to get the bugger into the net, which is not big enough, and tells me he’s ready for the rum (not so calmly though). I put the camera down and reach for the rum, unscrew the cap, lean over the fish with his many sharp little teeth, and begin to pour. What happened next was over in a blink of an eye. The fish shook, got off the hook, out of the net and back into the water. We were so close to having mackeral for dinner.