Sushi anyone?

The start of our first overnight sail of the season was like any other: no wind, sails flogging, glass like water and the incessant hum of our engine.  Sigh!  One of these years perhaps we will get to experience actual sailing by moonlight.  And what a beautiful full moon it was to light our passage!

We did our usual watch schedule with me from 10pm to 2am and Darryl taking over until 6am…although the reality is I am not a morning person and rarely get up at the prescribed 6am timeslot.  However, yesterday was different.  At 6:15am I could see Darryl through the hatch of our cabin moving around at the stern and thought something might be up so I dragged myself out of bed. 

We bought all the prescribed fishing gear last year shortly after moving aboard and did not use it once.  Darryl and I have very limited experience fishing but felt it was a requirement as a cruising boat to fish.  So there it sat collecting dust.  Move forward to this year where we met up with our friends, Janna and Christer, on their boat La Familia five weeks ago.  They motivated us to actually do something with this fishing rod of ours as apparently it doesn’t do you much good sitting on a shelf. 

So now our fishing rod has a new home set up permanently at the back of our boat and every time we set off we cast the line and just let it drag behind us.  Up to this point we haven’t had a nibble, but that changed yesterday morning as the sun is just rising, the reel starts spinning.  Darryl, looking like he knows what he is doing, reeled in the most beautiful fish, an amazing 14lbs/7kg tuna!!! 

What a spectacular setting as the sun is rising!

Now I never wake up sleeping children as a rule, but I knew Ella would be excited so I made an exception.

 Ella has wanted to catch a fish for so long hoping we could make our own sushi one day.  We even bought sushi rice and nori back in Venice (yes, that is how long we have been planning for this day!).  So sushi we made!

It was a great team effort to pull off making all this sushi.

 The best part of catching this tuna is sharing it with friends!  We have had such a remarkable time sailing with our friends on La Familia, who we wintered with in Finike.  And to make it even sweeter, we met up yesterday with other friends we also wintered with, Jeff and Sandra on Nawii. 

Nawii in the front and La Familia just beside them.

As a separate unbelievable story, just before dinner, another Canadian boat anchored beside us.  We figured the more the merrier, so invited them too.  Only to learn that Ken and Lima live just two blocks from where we lived in North Vancouver, belong of the same sailing association (Bluewater Cruising) and Ken taught Darryl the two diesel mechanics courses he took before we left.  I never cease to be amazed at how small this world is!

So with a full cockpit we had an amazing evening of sushi and conversation!

This is unrelated to this story, but Darryl has tried his hand at spearfishing with no success to speak of.  As much as he enjoys it, he admits the outcome of line fishing was far satisfying with less effort.
Thanks Janna for teaching Darryl to spearfish!