Day 18 – Gone Fishing

We had a peaceful night at anchor off Tristan.

We were woken up in the early hours of the morning by the Tristan lobster boats going out to fish.The weather was perfect and apparently the boats only manage to go out to fish for about 40 days of the year due to adverse weather conditions.

Erik, from fisheries sent a boat out to collect Ash and Jane to go fishing with a local crew for the day.It was a great opportunity to experience a day in the life of a Tristan fisherman. We put a lure out the back and within minutes we had already landed a yellowfin, the first of 6 that morning. All the while we were putting out lobster nets. We then set a long line ,which we could only leave in for 10 minutes as the shark would take what we hooked. On that line we pulled up one large stumpnose and 2 massive bluefish weighing at least 30kg each.

We spent the morning weaving in and out of the kelp beds, picking up lobster catch from the other lobster boats and transporting it back to the harbor. Within 3 hours we had over 700kg of export quality lobster ready for packaging to the USA, UK and Japan.

The abundance of marine stock astounded us, all expertly managed by the people of Tristan to ensure sustainability into the future.

We were back at JML RS at 2pm and spent a relaxed afternoon preparing the yacht for the Cape Town passage.

Uwe ,Pat, Joey and Sean had opted to go back onto the island and took a 2km walk to the proudly maintained potato patches to stretch their legs – they came back exhausted and immediately enjoyed an afternoon siesta on their return.

5pm brought the noise of a familiar fishing boat pulling up alongside –again with gifts of fresh fish fillets and live lobster. We ate like kings that evening as we marveled at the generosity of Tristan fisherman