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and eating your own fare, it becomes an irresistible combination. To prepare us for the many
fish ahead, Mark snuck away one afternoon in Falmouth, Cornwall to buy the requisite deep-sea
fishing reel and lures. Proudly showing off his new purchase that evening, it was not long before
“Freddie” the fishing line was christened. We were now ready to start collecting the sort of stories
to tell our grandchildren.
Cadiz Fishing Fleets And Our First Catch
It was 5 weeks till we actually put Freddie to the test: one morning after a beautifully peaceful night
passage from the Algarve to Cadiz, we were rudely interrupted by a fleet of fishing vessels
circling around each other and working huge trawling nets in unison. Normally we only have to
deal with one or two at a time, but in this case there were at least 5 or 6 vessels of at least 30m
(three times our size). This made it tricky to find a path through them, but it also meant that we
were close enough to tell that they had a successful haul. Their prize? Tuna, much coveted
from these waters by the Japanese sushi markets. Since one of the hardest parts about fishing
is knowing where to find the fish, these fleets had inadvertently done most of the work for us. It
didn’t take long to get Freddie set up on the pushpit (back rail), connect a large red artificial 'squid'
deep-sea lure, and then hope for the best. A few hours went by, and we had almost left another
fishing fleet behind us when we finally heard the unfamiliar whiz of our line being taken.
We have since discovered the funny thing about fish - they almost always manage to strike at the
most inopportune times: when you’re locked in the toilet, cooking dinner, or in this case trying to
outrun a stray fishing vessel at over 7 knots. We were trailing about 80 yards of line behind us,
and couldn’t slow down before we had outmaneuvered it. By the time we could wind in our line,
we were no longer sure we had a fish attached, until a shiny silvery tuna showed up. Weighing
in at about 6 lbs it certainly wouldn’t win any prizes, but it was a perfect size for two of us. In only
his first few hours of service, Freddie had done us proud.
In the excitement of catching our first fish, and in the hopes of catching many more, we made a
few rules:
- Inspired by the hurricane naming convention used by meteorologists we would name all
the fish we ate, starting alphabetically and alternating between female and male names. - Whoever catches a fish has to gut and clean it
- Whoever catches a fish gets to pick the name of the next fish.
Thus “Anna” was named, photographed, and gutted, as Quintin put a bottle of white wine to chill in
the fridge, and headed us towards land again. We were excited to have caught something so
quicklyand couldn’t decide how to eat her...after referring to a few cookbooks to determine our
culinary options, we decided to use Anna as the proverbial guinea pig to determine what would
work best in the future. This is what we settled on (a surprising amount for a smallish tuna):
- Sashimi (admittedly very little of this)
- Ceviche (raw tuna “cooked” by the acidic reaction of adding lemons/limes)
- Blackened Cajun (skin off)
- Pan-fried with lemon (skin on)
After anchoring in Puerto Sherry across the bay from Cadiz, we settled down to our
sophisticated lunch. What a magical 24 hours.
The Day Our Adventure Truly Started
Mark had always claimed that this adventure would only truly start for him the day he could wake
up, dive in the water in 2 steps, and catch dinner for everyone. This dream was finally realized
one morning on the south coast of Ibiza, in the Balearic Islands. Waking up early, and grabbing
the speargun we had inherited when we bought Skardu, Mark swam around the headland to try
his luck. After an hour he caught a glimpse, not of a fish, but rather of an octopus darting across
the rocky sea floor deep below. One deep dive… a few clouds of ink… a pulled trigger… a lot of
luck….and dinner was ours. In this spirit of our naming alliteration, the speargun was baptized
“Spike” and the octopus was called “Oscar” (yes, we know it doesn’t fit the fish naming scheme
above, but then again, “Oscar” was a cephalopod and not a fish!).
But how do you cook an Octopus? Fortunately, Mark had sailed with a mad Greek captain
about 10 years ago who had initiated him into the rights of preparing one. You need one big hard
rock or marina quay, one octopus and a lot of energy. It involves grabbing the octopus by the
tentacles and smacking it about 100 times against the rock to tenderize it. You then have to
remove the beak and ink sack (fortunately empty on Oscar), and then massage it for a while….
or in Captain Yanus’ strong Greek accent, you have to “treeet it like a voman.” This is no small
amount of work, but since the novelty factor was high, Mark and Troels rowed to shore in the
evening sun to follow these instructions.
Unwilling to try to emulate the fine octopus tapas we had eaten whilst in Bayona, we settled for
cooking it in a delicious spicy tomato sauce; accompanied by yet another bottle of chilled white
wine, with Beethoven. It was delicious, and truly a dream come true.
"Spike" in Action
Having christened Spike appropriately, it was not long before spear fishing became our favourite
pastime at anchor. Almost everytime we dropped the hook, schools of blue fish would
congregate in Skardu’s shadow. Thinking we would have an easy catch, one of us would
always vie to be the first to dive in. Unfortunately, the fish were always smarter than we were,
and at the first sighting of Spike they would all go swimming off. That’s what made it all the more
surprising that on a single day while at the exquisite anchorage of La Foradada in Mallorca we
managed to catch 3 fish for dinner in a single morning. With our new found rule in place, Mark
taught Quintin how to scale and gut his fish, and before you knew it, we had enough food for the
four of us on board.
After referring to our fishing cook book, we decided to steam them with ginger, spring onions and
sesame oil: a dish much favoured in Hong Kong’s seafood restaurants. The one difficulty was
that since we don’t have a wok or steaming tray on board, we had to jury rig one from a sawed
off beer can, an old pot and small plate. This worked a treat, and soon Buster (a sea bream),
Charlotte and Desmond (both Salemas), were being served to the hungry crew.
On the very next day, while Mark was catching Erica (a large-ish sheepshead bream) in the
deep water around Sa Calobra, Quintin had spent the morning climbing up a nearby mountain
and had picked fresh rosemary from the hillsides. When it came time to decide how to cook
Erica, it seemed natural to use some of the local flavours: Erica was stuffed with lemon, garlic
and the freshly picked rosemary, and then gently broiled.
Felix – A Big Fish In A Small Sea
After a few days of bad luck and bad weather, we were sailing down the coast of Ibiza from
Mallorca in mid October when our latest crew-member Matthew decided our luck might turn if
we threw a line out. Given that it was lunchtime and fish normally only come out at dawn and
dusk, we did not hold out much hope, but we decided to humour him nonetheless. Only 30
minutes later we heard the familiar whizzing sound of a fresh catch. We all jumped up on deck,
and as we slowly pulled in the line we were not quite sure what we’d caught. Big splashes in the
distance as we brought it in meant that it wasn’t small, but we were still clueless until it was up
near the stern. Mark shouted that is must be a tuna, but Matthew quickly pointed out that he had
never seen a tuna sporting a massive sword on its head! As we pulled it out of the water it
slashed wildly trying to sever the line that had been caught on its sword, but to no avail. We
pulled “Felix” in and quickly measured him at 1.16m long and weighing about 14 lbs; admittedly
modest for a sword fish, but still a very healthy meal for four hungry sailors. Mark gutted Felix,
and Matthew helped prepare the marinade (soy, sesame oil, lime, sherry etc.) for him while we
sailed into San Antonio, Ibiza for yet another sunset at anchor by the legendary Café del Mar.
Beers, sunset, broiled marinated swordfish and a long windy night passage ahead of us to
Spain. Ahhhh.
Gina – A Day For Learning, And The One That Almost Got Away
Gina, Gina, Gina. Well, Gina was in fact almost 3 different fish.
Gina #1: After a wild and lively exit out of the Straits of Gibraltar into the Atlantic, we finally had
calm enough weather to throw Freddie out. In keeping with the inopportune timing for our strikes,
this one came as we were preparing to gybe to avoid a tanker in the distance. Shouts down
below and Quintin was soon up to join Mark on deck. As the line wound in, we could see a
beautiful large blue-and-yellow fish with a big blunt head swimming below us: a dorado, otherwise
known as a dolphinfish or mahi-mahi. In Mark’s haste to get it up on deck, she managed to
wriggle off our line and jumped back in the water to live another day. Note to self: Next time buy a
gaff hook. Later we found out that the dorados with the blunt bull heads are actually the males, so
maybe it was just as well that we didn’t catch a male “Gina”!
Gina #2 was a complete monster, and most definitely worthy of Jules Verne. By the time we
had jumped to the back of the boat to grab onto our screaming reel, she had already taken half
our line. You could just imagine the reel smoking as it whirred away. Mark started to pull her in
bit by bit, thoughts of a royal feast already in mind. But half way through struggling with her, the
line suddenly went slack. We pulled in the rest of the line to find out that this beast had managed
to slash through a 60lb test line with ease, and had taken one of our prize squid lures and hooks
with her. Note to self: buy a super-duper extra-strong line next time!
Gina #3 – Finally, the next day, when we had all but given up hope of having anything but pasta
for dinner and thought that Neptune had put a hex on us, Freddie announced the arrival of
dinner. This time we took no chances, we carefully brought her in, and were rewarded with a
lovely female dorado weighing about 9 lbs and a little over 70cm in length (>2 ft). Mark quickly
gutted her, and grilled her up: one fillet with Cajun spices, and the other with some fish seasoning
bought in the spice markets of Marrakesh for just such an occasion.
Humphrey
Well, we haven’t caught Humphrey yet, but we’re trying to do our best to make sure he won’t get
away. Whilst in Gran Canaria preparing for our big Atlantic crossing, we have added to our
fishing gear and tackle box. This is what we now have on board:
- Fishing Equipment
1 Penn-Senator fishing reel, with over 300m of 50lb line ("Freddie")
1 80lb deep-sea trolling rod + stern-rail clamp, for use with Freddie (*New*)
1 Okuma fishing reel, with 320m of 60lb line (*New*)
1 light-weight casting rod (inherited, unused, and hence un-named)
1 6ft Gaff Hook
1 Speargun ("Spike")
Lures
3 squid lures for tuna
1 "Magnum" coastal lure
5 lures to catch Atlantic fare (Dorado, Wahoo, Tuna, Swordfish) (*New*)
