A Picnic

A few days after meeting the village people we were pretty good friends with them.  We invited them onto our boat for a short sail to a beach everyone called the Sand Spit because a long spit of sand wound out from the beach at low tide.  In the morning at 9:00 we picked up our hostess sand a couple of her friends.  There was Mere our hostess, her uncle, his daughter her niece, Meres husband Jone, and two girls who were just friends.  

We reached the Sand Spit and everyone suited up in their swim suits for a fun day at the beach!  I rigged the sailing dinghy and took Cleo and Archie to the beach, everyone else followed, swimming paddling or sailing to shore.  Some of the village people set up a shelter of saplings and palm fronds using nothing but machetes.  We split into groups, the little kids preferring to stay by the beach and play in the shallows while my dad and two village men took Cleo and Jasper spearfishing and two more village people went to catch coconut crabs for lunch.  I went with David, Sam, Archie and a village boy called Tua to catch some fish in the small salt water pools on the other side of the island.  We didn’t catch anything with our rods but Tua succeeded in catching five small fish with nothing but a rock.

We went back to the Sand Spit empty-handed but we’d had fun, Tua had taught us how to use the pieces of coral littered on the beach to catch small fish to use as live bait, but we still caught nothing.  When we returned to the beach I was hot and bothered from the mosquitos and sun on the beach, I caught a ride with one of the boys in the kayaks and went back to our boat for a cool off and spent half an hour by myself just chilling. I went back when I saw everybody gathering in the shelter for lunch.  I got to the beach just in time to get some lunch.  Everybody had participated in making the meal, the two people who had gone crabbing had brought back two huge coconut crabs the size of my head.  The spearfishing group had speared 5 fish which had been roasted over the fire until they were nice and crispy.

The food was awesome and after we were done we set up a soccer field and played a game of soccer.  My team won and and it was really fun playing in the sand.  We swam back to the boat and I took a shower while we sailed back to the village anchorage.

Fishing

We left Curacao a few days ago and are just getting into Santa Marta.  Yesterday evening we were all still up and awake, when there was a tug on the fishing line!  So far we hadn't caught one fish in our sailing adventure, even though one passage we had trolled the line for 4 days! My dad reeled it in and for a while we could see it, skimming along the waves a few meters away.  My dad hoisted it onto our boat and we could see it was a black-fin tuna.  My dad butchered it and we put it away for another meal, wile we all settled down for the night.  

The next day my sisters and I were sitting around, my mom was sailing the boat, and my dad was taking a nap, when the fishing line suddenly gave a sharp jerk and an odd buzzing sound! my mom yelled for me and I yelled for y dad until everybody was in the cockpit and looking and the rod.  It was a deep sea fishing line and very hard to reel in, but what made it really difficult for my dad was not only the size of the fish,  although it was no skipjack, but the distraction that came at that moment.  My dad was in the midst of trying to reel in this huge fish when the other line let out a call!  My dad told me and my sister, Cleo to attend to that while he struggled on with the original fish.  Cleo and I wrestled the line back onto the spool, watching the beautiful fish jump through rainbows above the water, and finally succeeded in hauling a Mahi-Mahi (Dolphin fish) onto the boat.  

My dad left the fishing rod for the time being and helped us subdue the thrashing creature, calling my mom over to watch, but she was busy trying to clean up a coffee spill that was threatening to break the electronics that she had left on the helm-seat.  Through all this commotion the wind had sped up and the waves grown larger and larger until the boat was listing sickeningling to the starboard side.  I took pictures of the Mahi-Mahi and got my dads sailing gloves for him, ducking under the main-sheet every time I wanted to reach him.  In the end we lost the big fish but, thinking back on it, I don't think we could've eaten it anyway, what with the two other good-sized fish we had already caught on that passage.

jade and the mahi mahi

We caught a mai mahi. We caught another fish. We decided to eat the mahi mahi another night. Cleo had to stay with the fish so that it didn't jump overboard, and she did a good job. It was good for dinner.

The End

Tuna Tales

My dad holding the fish

We were going on a passage.

We started in the morning and sailed the whole day.

All that day we had the fishing lines out but like always we caught nothing.

The next day we put the fishing lines out again. We sat around reading playing games and drawing my dad and mom were sitting in the helm seat.

Suddenly the fishing line went berserk and my dad said, "we got a fish." He ran over to the fishing line and started to reel it in. As soon as we saw the fish jump that was on our line I jumped with joy than it was on the surface and surfing towards us.

 After it was on the boat and dead my dad bled it which is how you get all the blood out.

After we got it all cut up and into a container we put out the line again. Everyone went back to what they were doing.

                                   I love fishing!!!!