by Delphine
(Day 2 passage from Marquesas to the Tuamotus)
After my night watch, I went to bed at 3:30. In my sleep, I heard huge commotion and Grant shouting ‘it’s huge marlin. I saw it jumping. Hurry!! Hurry!!! Sail down!!!’ We brought the parasail down, and Grant asked me to hold onto the massive sailbag while he ran to the fishing rod. Arabella was on the helm driving the boat. Wind was blowing strong and I was trying to hold onto the sailbag with my dear life. Felt like I could be blown away! Needed to tie it down somewhere. Only got little 27kg Alex to help. Finally we managed to tie a rope around the sailbag to the mast.
Caught my breath and saw that it’s about 730am in the morning. Grant was at the bow fighting with the giant fish. He was harnessed to the boat in case the fish pulled him off the boat. He told Arabella to manoeuvre the boat depending on the pull of the fish. The fish has dived down deep and it was extremely hard work reeling in the fish. His back was killing him, so I brought him a small stool to sit on. The sun was hot and bright, and Grant was sweating, groaning and hurting. The fishing rod was bent like an upside down ‘U’ and I thought it would break anytime. Nevertheless the fight went on and on… 1 hour… 2 hours… 3 hours… and the fish still didn’t come up. No idea who would win this battle. Grant was determined
even though he was straining. Pure grit and determination.
Early on, we saw a big shark circling our boat. Grant already had a huge marlin on his hand and really didn’t want to deal with a shark now. In addition, he was worried that the shark would desecrate his marlin. Not really much we could do about the shark, so we ignored it.
Grant walked me through what needed to happen when the fish comes up. He had to walk from the bow to the stern and I had to pass him two gaffs, one after another. There’s a rope connected to the gaff. After gaffing the fish, he needed to tie a rope around the tail and then it’s secured. I was quite worried about this final moment and imagined a massive fight with the fish pulling Grant into the water, and the shark desecrating my husband instead of the marlin.
After what felt like eternity (4 and a half hours), we finally saw the white silhouette of the marlin. It’s massive, strong and beautiful. Surprisingly everything went smoothly and super quickly and the marlin was subdued (probably exhausted from the fight) by the time it surfaced. Grant walked along the boat to the stern and gaffed the eye. At this point, the shark pitched up and tried to have a go at the marlin. The shark didn’t manage to cause a mark on the marlin, as the marlin’s skin is thick and tough like leather with lots of sharp needle shaped scales. In addition, the marlin was much much bigger than the shark!!
We winched the rope with the gaff to pull the fish up. Grant tied another rope to the marlin’s tail. The marlin finally landed on our stern around noon. We hoisted the marlin with our crane and fully appreciated the grandeur of this beautiful 3.2m Black marlin! It’s quite a bit bigger than the blue marlin we caught last year when we crossed the Atlantic.
Somehow Grant still got energy left in him, and he went on gutting. cutting off the bill and tail and cutting up the fish into steaks and giant fillets at the back of our cockpit. After that, he crashed. I was in charge of removing the skin, cutting into smaller pieces, packing away and cleaning up with the girls. It’s one messy fishy job! I was covered in fish goo and blood! We put fillet everywhere – fridges, freezers, cooler boxes, and we even emptied our wine fridge for the marlin.
The fish was very white, firm and fat, and super delicious. Definitely worth the herculean effort.
Can’t believe the four of us (didn’t count Azania as she didn’t contribute very much) brought in such a massive fish. When we caught the blue marlin last time, we had Morgan, Fede, big Alex and Apple to help out.
Even though I didn’t fight with the fish, I felt absolutely shattered at the end of the day. Could only imagine how Grant felt. Another epic story to add to our collection of crazy memories and experiences.