Offshore Delights (Oct 28, 2015)
With an offshore dally the delights of life offshore returned. Bouncing gently on the bluer-than-blue water for a few brief moments, six spinner dolphins approached Whale Song. A few photos were clicked away but they were gone way too soon…
For a short time, Spinner dolphins checked us out.
Spying a Golden Bosunbird following along with us, I went on deck to get my camera. A great splashing at our fishing lure indicated good news.
Golden Bosunbirds accompanied us for most of the afternoon, what a treat.
‘Fish on the line!’ I called into the wheelhouse excitedly. As Mike ran to the line to pull in the fish, I instructed him about keeping tension on the line, ‘Don’t let it get slack, keep it tight!’ Fantastically, he did just that and perfectly he landed a gorgeous 5kg mahi-mahi on the aft deck. The gathered crew did all necessary to keep this fish on deck and prevent any possibility of jiggling away. Until one has experienced the devastating loss of a landed fish, (somehow slithering out through a scupper or down the aft stairs), one does everything to prevent this ever happening again. Cornering our quarry near the aft winch on the aft main deck worked! After an hour of filleting, Sam was done – good work! We had a mountain of fresh fish and a bag of fresh ‘bait’, tiny fish taken from it’s bursting belly. Mahi-mahi two ways from Resty’s galley was on the menu tonight! It was a team event – well done all!
The vibrant yellow and green colours of a pelagic mahi-mahi or dolphin fish can even be seen while being brought in on the line. Such a magnificent fish!
Fluttering of creamy-yellow wings at our windows continued and had me back on deck. Soon the one bird became two and with more fluttering and chattering, then three circled. With even more chattering in coarse ‘grrr-uk’ sounds, four birds were ducking and weaving and almost looking as though they desired to land. One by one, more birds joined the fray until seven birds were tossing and turning and swirling around with much accompanying ‘grrr-uks’. Pairs seemed to be copying each other in display flights. Moving away in pairs, they then came back together in a yellow swirl. All seven stayed with us for over an hour.
All of our activities are supervised from aloft by Red-footed boobies! You can see that the cable ties don’t work as a deterrent!
As the light faded towards sunset, another tangerine sky enveloped us. Feeling thoroughly happy at sea after yet another great day.
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