Day 12 – Thursday 16 January.

By Grant Chapman.

At the end of his early morning shift at 2:00am Zulu, Marcus heard one of the rods that we had inadvertently left trolling all night suddenly spring to life and he enthusiastically reeled in his catch, swinging it over the stern and into the cockpit for Chris at the helm to inspect, declaring @#*! man, I’ve caught a snake! A very long wriggling object about 3 foot long with large gnashers dangled from the end of the lure. Ashwyn took fright and almost fell over his feet as he scrambled down below to escape the monster of the deep that had suddenly appeared on deck. In the ensuing chaos and with no moonlight to see by in the overcast sky Chris declared that it was an eel and Grant said he thought it had a tail like a fish and what looked like dorsal fins so maybe it was just a very long fish after all. Someone else said that Marcus had taken too long to bring the fish in and it had gotten stretched being dragged behind the boat. Close inspection with a head torch revealed that it was in fact a very elongated fish with an impressively large head and teeth that one would imagine a sea creature several millennia ago might have. We immediately took a picture of the fish and e-mailed it to the one person we knew would quickly give us some gen on whether the fish was edible and how it should be prepared – Mark Jennings, who came back to us with the following advice: “The fish you have caught is a Snake Mackerel which is often caught as bycatch in the tuna longline fishery and is of minor commercial importance. It is marketed frozen or in sausages and fish cakes. In Hawaii this fish is known as hāuliuli and is considered good eating cooked or dried. King Kamehameha was apparently not fond of it, as he once remarked that it is a “delicious fish for the back country people”, meaning fine for those who could not obtain anything better” Thank you Mark!

Grant said that as it was a mackerel we needed to “cook” it just using lemon juice and some herbs as he said that he had prepared Queen Mackerel that he had spearfished this way and it was delicious. The others were very dubious of this and there were grumbles that they were guinea pigs but as they had enjoyed their tuna prepared in 3 different ways they said they would give it a try. Fortunately Grant then landed a nice-sized Dorado which was a beautiful yellow colour with a rainbow shimmer in the light but as soon as it was dispatched it did what Dorados always do and turned a reflective silver colour. Virgil and Marcus gutted both fish, filleting the Dorado for grilling on the fire later and slicing the Mackerel into bite-sized pieces to be soaked in lemon juice and dusted with mixed herbs and black pepper to be stored in the fridge until supper time.

Cathleen took us for a walk down memory lane with some timeless classics played on the boat’s stereo system off her iPod and everyone was in a very rustig mood with gentle 10 knot winds blowing us along on a run with the main sail right out and the big purple spinnaker deployed off the bow in a following sea. Peter had us take down the spinnaker and swop it for the heavier black spinnaker so that he could effect some repairs to it as it was becoming frayed along the leaches and foot and there were also a couple of places where sunlight was showing through small tears in the big bag. The old faithful wasn’t going to do much further service, if any, after Rotary Scout returned to Cape Town after the race which is a pity as she is resplendent with her big fluer de lis scouts logo emblazoned across it. As soon as we put the repaired purple spinnaker up again our boat speed increased by at least a knot.

Marcus was interviewed by Fernando Hernandez of Eden FM, the local radio station, which we thought very fitting with us headed for Brazil and that the interviewer must be Portuguese. Mark Jennings mailed us to say that it went very well and would try and get a copy of it for the archives.

We downloaded the latest fleet position report and were pleasantly surprised to see that we had jumped to third place on handicap ahead of Vulcan, Cool Runnings and Jacaranda of Carrick in our class. This also put us in the no. 1 spot in the cruising class as the only boats ahead of us; Yolo (You only live once!) and Perie Banou Rolly Tusker are both racing boats. Incidentally, Australian Jon Sanders, OBE, Order of Australia, the skipper of Perie Banou which was moored in front of Rotary Scout at the RCYC is currently completing his 9th circumnavigation of the world.

Lorraine and Ashwyn baked another delicious beer bread for lunch, this time with raisins, with which we had egg mayonnaise. Once again we had Ultramel custard with guavas for pudding. Shortly after lunch a large vessel called the BBC Charters Aquamarine crossed our bows steaming for somewhere on the west coast of Africa. Although she passed us at a distance of about 3 cables (0.3 nautical miles) she seemed very close and was the closest we had passed any other vessel since the start of the race. During his daily wash Chris disappeared under the stern of the boat to inspect the hull and reported afterwards that it was quite eerie seeing how infinite the sea seemed to be below the surface with absolutely nothing in sight other than an endless amount of blue water.

Heading into the sunset the wind started softening after a reasonable day’s sailing in winds averaging 10 knots. We sat down after sunset for a delicious supper of grilled Dorado and lemon-cooked Snake Mackerel coated with a soy sauce and wasabi mixture and served with rice and beans, ably assembled by Virgil. Although some did concede that the way the Mackerel was prepared, which was still quite bony as it was such a narrow fish and difficult to debone totally, was perhaps more of an acquired taste the plates were as good as licked clean, making Ashwyn’s turn at washing up a whole lot easier.