Adventure of the Bounty Hunters - Sail the Solomons 2000

by Fletcher Christian on 26 May 2000 What a day, so the sailing conditions weren’t for fast racing but otherwise the weather was perfect. It was the sort of stuff that entices us Mexicans to spend all our hard-earned dollars up North. Bright sun, cloudless sky, flat blue seas. The fishing looked to be promising as we hooked a small mackerel just off Morton Island. Being gung ho racers as we are we did not want to lose speed by winding down the motor, (oops).
The fish had to be content with skipping across our wake like a smooth stone. This was our first mistake as we lost the fish, our second was to keep trying. We heard later that some of the boats had good catches, another old saying is 10 percent of the fishermen catch 90 percent of the fish, it sounded like these guys got their 90 percent alright.
The most improving aspect of the race is the weather. Balmy tropical nights, it’s a joy to sit outside and soak up the cool breeze and take in the starry firmament. We were also blessed with a full moon.

Sea birds abounded and it would be nice to see if we could identify some at a later stage. If we could not trouble the fish with our lure we did fool one silly gannet, luckily our lure was so long that it was able to have a taste and reject it without getting tangled in hooks. Terns not much bigger than the lure were also having a go fortunately with the same result.
The days began to get gradually warmer & more time to spend on sunning ourselves. At the start of the race we were still an underdone beige. There were other signs of climbing the latitudes than the flying fish. We started to see coconuts and we sent someone forward with a net in case we could catch one of the legal size but they started to take evasive action as no more came near the boat.

I just like to give you a picture of what you can expect on a voyage such as this. Picture sunset in the Coral Sea. Looking to the west you see a quarter of a deep orange orb in the midst of a moody frame of mauve clouds. Above is a fringe of cloud highlighted in pink. The sun then sinks ever so slowly into the indigo sea. The sun shrinks to a tiny orange speck and then nothing.