Saturday 4 September 2010

Picton Castle at anchor off Palmerston Island, Cook Islands; Saturday 4 September 2010 בס"ד

Crazy day. Woke up at about 0800 or so, had breakfast with Paul and Sue, then hung out on the beach waiting for the boat to bring me back to the ship. Loaded up and got back to PC at about 1030. Began work wirebrushing the big BBQ until 1130, when I began setting up for lunch (which was prepared already), since I was put on galley duty. Did that, cleaned up, then we had a swim call til 1330, and we were all going off the rope swing. After, made marinade for chicken, and sorted through some pretty rotten spinach for a while looking for green pieces. While doing this, several humpback whales were surfacing nearby, but no exciting breaches. Cut up and prepared veggies for Nadja, and we had a workshop on ground tackle on the hatch. After, Leonard and Megan and I worked on getting the small grill lit and fired up. Then at around 1715, Dapper caught a small whitetip reef shark that had tangled itself up in the fishing line. At first we hauled it up on deck and put it in a tote, and we were going to kill it, but ended up setting it free because it was still a juvenile-looking guy. At this time it started raining, and I finished grilling for dinner at around 1900, so dinner was late. After dinner, Dan caught a second shark on accident when taking in the fishing lines, and this one was 2 meters long, so I filmed and aided Dan, Rebecca, and Brad take it on for the kill. It was pretty tricky, and Rebecca cut off its tail with a machete and we let it bleed out over the rail before taking it in. This of course attracted many several more sharks, but we were done fishing. Dan and Brad just gutted the second shark, and it's still pouring down hard. I'm pretty beat.