Sailing Jeannius: Day 33: Panama to Ecuador

A stream of small tourist fishing boats leaves the bay around 6.30 am, so quietly that I don’t hear them. Mike and Jim are up and about though and Jim notices the men on one of them pointing and taking photographs of the back of our boat where all my bikinis are lined up drying. Why would they photograph that? I have no idea, but when I get up, I do the same!

Photo: Bikinis in a row

We leave the bay around 7 am, and very quickly form two little lines of waddling ducks, us and Tucanon following the same course and the other four boats following another. The bay is just as eerily calm as when we arrived yesterday.

Photo: Leaving Puerto Pina

I make a couple for Skype calls and am trying to send my last email when finally the signal fades and it sits in my inbox. Ah well. It will go when we get to La Libertad, Ecuador.

Almost immediately we are out of the bay, we see two stingrays flinging themselves out of the water and landing with loud splashes. Apart from yesterday morning, I have never seem them do this, so both times were in early morning and dead calm conditions. Strange.

We motor sail. Slowly. Everybody else motor sails, but quicker, and very soon we are the last waddling duck on the sea. We hear the others constantly on the VHF, warning each other about fishing nets etc so we get lots of advance information about such obstacles.

I go back to bed for a while and suddenly hear Mike yelling for me to get the camera and get up to find him reeling a large fish in. In the water it is bright green and yellow with turquoise fins – it looks really beautiful and is a very healthy size too. Mike lands him on the back step and when we get a good look we realise that he has just caught his first mahi mahi. Scrummy!

Photos: Fighting to get away but eventually landed – look at those colours!

Photo: Within half an hour he has lost all his vibrant colours

Photo: Mike with his catch

Mike guts it and I fillet it. I am a little disappointed that this fish, which is 42” long, only yields just over 2 kilos of meat but perhaps that’s why it is so expensive – about £20 a kilo in the UK – when you can get it that is.

Photo: The same fish after Mike and I have done our fishmonger act on it!

I pack three quarters of it into the freezer (please don’t stop working) and cut the last quarter into large nuggets and marinate it in the sauce I usually make for tiger prawns. We will have this with mango mayonnaise and coconut rice tonight.

About half an hour after we finish washing down the “grill of death” (where we deal with the fish) Mike gets another bite. And it’s another mahi mahi. This one puts up even more of a fight though, and after ten minutes of fighting, and even having been brought up onto the back step twice, it leaps out of the water, bashes itself on the side of the boat and manages to knock the hook out and it’s off like a bat out of hell. At least he didn’t take our lure, which flies up in the air and lands just behind us, narrowly missing catching one of us in its descent. Luckily I filmed this although at the end when it flies off the hook I miss it and the camera goes all over the place as I duck to miss the flying hook.

The rest of the day goes by in a haze of nothing really, No wind, no waves, nothing to look at except a few bored looking dolphins. At least we have a beautiful sunset, and the mahi mahi is the most succulent I have ever eaten, and probably the freshest.

Photo: Basking in the glow of the sunset