Tall Tales of Flying Fish

It was an idyllic passage

on our South Atlantic crossing, but even so, there was constantly something that needed attention.

Last week, I talked about one of our South Atlantic crossings on our sailboat Nine of Cups. It wasn’t our longest, by any means, but we did spend 42 days at sea. It was an almost idyllic passage - good winds for the most part, no storms and not too many things broke. We could go days without even having to adjust the sails. We still had a regular schedule, however. Someone always had to be on watch, of course, then there was meal prep and cleanup, routine maintenance, repairs on anything that needed it (a constant battle on a sea-going vessel), daily weather forecasts, daily emails via radio transmission and either collecting rainwater or converting seawater to fresh to make sure we always had adequate water in our tanks. Unless something major went wrong, though, we still had lots of time on our hands.

One of my daily chores, first thing in the morning, was to take a walk around the entire boat, looking for anything that might need attention like lines that were chafing, loose hardware or corrosion. It was also the time to count and chuck overboard all the flying fish and the occasional squid that boarded us during the night. Our running lights apparently attracted them after dark. We were always amazed at how many found their way aboard - 23 was our highest overnight count, and how high they flew - or jumped, in the case of squid. We’d often find them in the folds of our reefed mainsail which must have been close to ten feet above the waterline. And you have no idea how much it smarted and startled you to get smacked by one at 3 AM while on night watch.

Morning catch of flying fish

We averaged more than a dozen each night, and man, do they stink!

On one morning recon, as I was tossing a dozen or so flying fish back into the sea, we thought it would be fun to make a tongue-in-cheek video about rehabilitating an injured flying fish and releasing him back into the sea after he healed. (We really did have a lot of time on our hands!).

That was back in 2015, and we think it turned out pretty good. If you’ve never watched it, I just resurrected the old footage and updated it, so you might want to give it a try. It’s only a little over 3 minutes long, and we think you’ll get a chuckle or two from watching it. Here’s the link, if you’re interested.

Hope you enjoy it. See you next week…