After a two hour journey out to sea, we set up to start trawling for tuna. The monotonous rolling of the sea after we stopped the engine soon took its toll on me. I was so nauseous I thought I would die. It just doesn't let up. I loved the feel of the ocean during Semester at Sea on the MV Explorer with the big lulling swells, but out on that small fishing boat we were being dropped and lifted by the 6 ft swells just enough to churn my stomach into a putrid mixture. I went from white to green real quick. (at one point I looked over and Mandy was green and my black South African was white - it was hysterical until I realized the sun had turned me bright red - we were like the damn Bulgarian flag.)
Miles off shore aboard the Beluga, battling sea swells and nausea, I didn't realize I was about to be thrown head first into the biggest fight of my life.
We heard the "ZZZZZZZ" of line being dragged, signaling we had something on the hook. It was quickly determined to be another shark and the Captain started to reel it in to unhook it.
As he cranked the reel the shark spit the hook out and we could see the bait skipping along the surface towards us. Ah yes, we didn't have to struggle with a shark after all.
At the last second, the mammoth shark decided he wanted the bait back and charged after it, successfully hooking himself onto the lure. Crap. Captain Steve clearly thought I was more capable than I actually am when he entrusted me with this task and handed me the rod that was already bent nearly in half with tension. I sat, then stood, realizing I didn't have enough leverage while seated. I leaned back against the front of the boat, struggling with all my upper body strength to turn the reel even an inch. This damn shark would be the death of me, I thought. (I suggested she grab this shark, as I had gotten the previous two or three, hoping some excitement would quell her nausea, also hoping to get her as excited about sharking as I am - in retrospect, it was a bad idea. She looked strained, bent in half, white knuckling the rod handle awkwardly while she struggled to turn the reel. I was concerned she might tumble overboard with each swell.)
I didn't think it would be so hard, as the Captain and Caz reeled in little baby sharks earlier without too much hassle. But I was wrong. I hooked a big one.
The shark would not relent, refusing to be brought to the boat. As I struggled and mumbled out incoherent sounds of disbelief and horror I proclaimed, "WHAT IS THIS JAWS?!" (I laughed so damn hard at this I nearly fell overboard - I had seen the shark chasing the bait and had determined it wasn't bigger than three feet. It was more like two and a half.)
Indeed it was. It might as well have been a sharknado for all intents and purposes. There was no way this massive shark was getting pulled to the boat by a 140 lb. white girl. No chance! I'm no Frank Mundus! (I'm literally beaming with pride that Mandy just made this reference.) After a long battle of strength, the line could no longer handle the load and snapped, freeing the shark hook and all.
My professional reenactment and account of what happened.
There seems to be some dispute as to the size and strength of Jaws, but I stand by my story. Okay MAYBE the shark was smaller but it was still REALLY strong.
Written by
Mandy
Commentary by
-Rh
On to Lord Nelson.
After our day at sea and 300 lb of tuna later, we finally made it back to land and the apartment in one piece. The combination of nausea and sun left me with what I'm pretty sure was a minor case of heat stroke, or at the very least some serious dehydration. It felt exactly like a terrible hangover. Every time I closed my eyes I got the drunk spins, all I could stomach was water, and I felt like I would puke or pass out at any minute. It was rough. But the night wasn't over! It was back down the street to the Mount Nelson... Looking even more homeless than the last time I was there, we had reservations at their incredibly luxurious restaurant, Planet. I'm pretty sure Muda was the first person in the hotel's history to be let into the restaurant wearing sweatpants. Like a boss. The hotel chef offered to cook a few steaks of the tuna that Caz's father caught just a few hours earlier. Talk about knowing where your food comes from. A little too traumatized by the amount of blood that resulted from beating the big beautiful fish to death with a bat, I was not partaking in the fishy festivities. I was merely trying to stay conscious, fighting against the exhaustion and dehydration.
We meet again...
Literally just had giant ship models and maps of colonial subjection all over.
Before heading to the Planet Restaurant we got to see a bit more of the hotel itself. It only reaffirmed my theory and suspicions of British occupational opulence. Walking into an open hall of one of the buildings it was like walking into a trophy room to british conquest. The walls were covered in old world maps of trading routes and colonies of European empires. It was nuts. The room we got to see on the inside had it's own pillars in the sitting room, yes there was a sitting room, and the bedroom area was slathered in yellow twall.
This was the theme of the entire hotel... old world fat cats.
I'm so startled.
But dinner was amazing and the restaurant staff were so wonderfully pleasant that I couldn't make fun of it. They really did a great job. We celebrated the catch with some bubbles and followed an awesome dinner with an even better dessert of passion fruit crumble cake with praline ice cream. SO GOOD!
Also the dinning area was gorgeous and not as oppressively opulent as the rest of the hotel and we got to eat our dinner in big squishy chairs that I wanted to fall asleep in.
So we drank a toast to the day's catch and I drank a celebratory glass for my battle against jaws. It was a wonderful day.
Mandy<3
No comments:
Post a Comment