Bird and fish and whales–oh my!

During the COVID lockdown we have learned to appreciate the small exciting moments as they come. Last week, we had the most exciting 24 hours in the past 4 months. This was the day that we decided to pull out some shark teeth. If you haven’t already read it, go check out Lucy’s previous post as she highlights our extraordinary dentistry skills. We were all pretty tired after a full day in the sun and we were finally getting the smell of rotting shark flesh out of our heads. 

Dad decided to head to bed early while the rest of us watched Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. It’s a great movie, we would all highly recommend. After we had finished we were all getting ready to head to bed when out of nowhere a small black blur flew into our boat. Not knowing what it was, all four of us started shrieking. We were screaming for probably too long before realizing it was a small, lost bird. Still don’t know how dad slept through it. I ran to my room and shut the door, Sally did the same. After taking a deep breath I opened my door to head out. I opened my door only to come face to face with the bird I was hiding from. So back into my room I went. I only came out once I was sure that ‘it’, I still had no idea what this creature was, I thought it was a bat, was gone for good. It only took a few minutes for mom to wrap the little bird in a towel and get him on the right track out the door. Still, those few minutes were some of the most exciting since COVID entered the picture. 

We all went to sleep, a little frazzled from all the excitement. The next morning we got up, put the sails up, and headed towards our next destination. It was a longer sail so we turned off the engine and threw out our fishing line. The day crept along, the sun blazing down on us. I was on watch, listening to some music and trying to keep from overheating. Then the bzzzzzz of the fishing line went off and I jumped out of my seat. Everyone rushed out into the cockpit and dad helped steady the rod while I cranked in the fish. It turned out to be a 30 inch, 8 pound mahi! We hadn’t caught a mahi in a while and it is one of our favorite fish. Dad and I were just starting to filet the fish when the line started going crazy again. Lucy took the reel and cranked and cranked. It was another mahi and it was a big one! We got it into the boat and then, it spit out the hook, flopped down our stairs and swam away. Very disappointing but there’s always next time. Dad and I finished the cleaning process of the fish I caught. Soon after we had cleaned everything up, the line ws buzzing again and Sally reeled in yet another mahi. It was smaller than the previous two but still made a very tasty meal. We cleaned everything up again and sat down to take a break. Three fish in such a short amount of time was crazy! Very exciting. 

Lucy and I went to adjust the sails, as the wind was dying. Out of nowhere, there was a huge puff of air shooting out of the ocean about 5 feet off our boat. Lucy and I were a bit rattled to put it nicely. We soon recovered and went to watch the massive whale play at our bow. Normally a pod of dolphins will swim out to our boat and play right in front of us. But dolphins are significantly smaller than whales. This whale, what we think to be a sei whale (Sally should have a post on these guys coming soon), was over 50 feet. For reference, our boat is 37 feet. It would swim around, come up for air, show us its belly and keep swimming with us. Willie loved the whale and we had to hold him back to keep him from jumping in. At one point, we lost sight of the whale. We thought he had gone off to keep swimming but then! A blast of air came up in our trampolines in between the hulls and soon the giant was swimming out from underneath our boat. As cool as the entire thing was, seeing a whale swim up from under my home was a bit shocking. The whale stuck with us for a good 30-45 minutes and by the time he left, it was time for us to start thinking about putting the sails down and anchoring.

Something that being on lockdown has really brought out is the little adventures or minutes of something new that become the excitement for the next week. So for us, this past week was a small bird, three good sized mahi, and a huge whale.