Ahead of us was one of the longer passages of the entire journey. After all those Pacific legs of three, four or five days, this was something else. We were looking at almost two and a half weeks at sea before reaching Bali, which suddenly made the shorter island-to-island passages feel almost trivial. In the Caribbean we often moved from one island to another in half a day; in the Pacific the distances had already become much more serious, but this passage required a completely different rhythm.
The days slowly started to blend into one another. We read books, stood watches, fixed small things around the boat and spent more and more time on what had by then become almost a separate discipline on board — fishing. In Port Moresby we finally had decent internet, so I downloaded a pile of material about tuna, marlin, sailfish, swordfish, trolling lures, different rigs and the way several rods and lures could be spread behind the boat.
The problem was that we were reading all of this while already in the middle of the ocean. In books and online everything looks simple: use this lure, that leader, the right hook, the right reel, and that is it. We had whatever we happened to have. So we mixed and matched gear, rebuilt rigs, improvised, and sent messages to friends asking them to find this hook, that hook, a different leader, another lure for the next opportunity.
We were slowly changing from people who happened to drag one lure behind the boat into people acting as though they were preparing for a serious game-fishing expedition.
As soon as we left Papua New Guinea, the first real navigational challenge was waiting for us. We had to pass through narrow shipping channels in the Great Barrier Reef and Torres Strait area, where there was not much room for error. Large commercial ships used the same routes, while outside the marked channels the water was shallow enough in places that experimenting with shortcuts would have been a very bad idea.
We started very early and covered most of the passage through the channel during daylight. In several places the route changed direction, and there were wider sections where large ships appeared to be waiting for their turn or permission to continue. It felt less like open sea and more like travelling along a road cut through the reef.
Late the following night we finally cleared the more complicated section and reached more open water again. Everything had gone without problems, but it was not exactly the kind of passage where you lie down, relax and forget where you are.
After that, the wind became unpredictable. Sometimes it blew nicely, sometimes it weakened, and on several days it stopped completely. We even had periods of perfect calm, with the sea so flat that the horizon almost merged with the surface and the sails simply hung uselessly. For part of the route we had to motor.
Those days were perfect for fishing. We mainly fished by trolling, meaning the boat continued on its normal course while one or more lures were dragged behind the stern. Some were simple, some improvised, and some were proper offshore lures with long rubber skirts, the kind used for tuna, mahi-mahi, wahoo, sailfish and other large open-ocean predators.
The rods worked while we read, ate, stood watch or simply stared at the sea. Then, without warning, a reel would start screaming and everything else stopped instantly. Somewhere behind the boat, something had just hooked itself and clearly had a very different plan from ours.
We caught several different kinds of tuna, and this was when I really started learning how to tell them apart. Yellowfin was no longer just “that tuna,” skipjack no longer looked the same as everything else, and I slowly started paying attention to body shape, fins, colour and small details that I had never noticed before. Along with the tuna we also caught mahi-mahi, and once we found a small fish still in the mouth of a larger mahi-mahi, something it had swallowed just before we caught it.
Anything that was obviously small or young went straight back into the sea. There was no point keeping fish we had nowhere to store, especially as our freezer was already starting to look like a fish market. One of the main problems with successful fishing on a sailboat is that eventually you have to work out what to do with all that meat.
One night, after it was completely dark, something very strange hooked itself.
As we brought it toward the boat, we were convinced at first that we had caught some kind of sea snake. Out of the black water came a long, silver, incredibly thin fish, around a metre and twenty centimetres long, almost like a belt with a head attached to it.
Once we got it aboard, we realised there was barely any meat on it. Its body was so thin that it looked more like a strip of metal than a fish. We looked at it, decided we had absolutely no idea what we would do with it, and put it back into the sea.
At the time we did not even know exactly what species it was.
We only knew that it definitely was not a snake.
We also caught barracuda, including one fairly serious one, but those we usually released. A mouth full of enormous teeth always seemed like a good enough reason not to spend too much time arguing over who was going to become whose dinner.
Then one morning, everything we had been reading about big-game fishing suddenly became real.
We had two of probably the worst rods we owned out behind the boat. The reels were small thirty-size models we had borrowed, and none of us considered them the kind of equipment with which anything historic was likely to happen.
At around nine in the morning, one of those reels started making a sound we had never heard before.
Line was disappearing from the spool at an insane rate.
I grabbed the rod and immediately realised that there was something serious on the other end. Luckily, we were motoring at the time, so I started shouting for the boat to slow down. If we continued at the same speed, it was obvious that either the equipment would fail or both the rod and I would end up in the water.
We reacted quickly and even reversed slightly to reduce the pressure.
The fight lasted around forty minutes.
The fish would run, I would recover a few metres, and then it would take them back again. Slowly we began to tire it out and eventually managed to bring it alongside the boat.
That was when we finally saw what we had hooked.
A sailfish.
It was over two metres long and weighed roughly 35 to 36 kilograms. It was by far the biggest fish we had managed to land up to that point.
Sailfish belong to the billfish group and are instantly recognisable by their long bill and enormous dorsal fin, which looks like a sail. They are powerful open-ocean predators, famous for speed, sudden changes of direction and spectacular fights, which is why they are so highly regarded in sport fishing.
In photographs they look elegant.
When one is hanging beside your boat, thrashing its head from side to side with a bill longer than your forearm, elegance is no longer the first thing that comes to mind.
While I held the rod and tried to lift its head as far out of the water as possible, it kept swinging that bill left and right. At one point it became obvious that we had another problem entirely: how do you bring aboard a fish that can quite realistically stab someone?
Somehow, we managed.
We did not have proper equipment for quickly dispatching such a large fish, so we tried several ways to calm it down as fast as possible. At one point we even tried alcohol, but the fish apparently did not share our opinion that this was an appropriate treatment.
Its reflexes remained incredibly strong for some time, but eventually it stopped moving.
After the photographs came the part of the fishing story people usually talk about much less.
Now we had to fillet more than two metres of fish.
With tuna, I had already developed something of a routine. I knew how to open them, where the backbone was, how to remove the bloodline and how to take off four clean loins.
The sailfish was a completely different problem.
It was so long that I did not even have a proper working surface large enough for it.
By then the sun was already brutal. We were practically on the equator, the heat was unbearable, and I spent a large part of the day on deck wearing a white hat and holding a hose. Sometimes I sprayed the fish, sometimes myself, and then went back to work.
Eventually we managed to finish the job.
The little tuna still left in the freezer had to be reorganised because the sailfish had basically invaded the entire food-storage system. Whatever did not fit into the freezer went into the fridge.
From that moment, the menu became fairly predictable.
Sailfish for breakfast.
Sailfish for lunch.
Sailfish for dinner.
The first piece we simply pan-fried with very little oil. The smell was excellent and we expected something fantastic.
The flavour was good.
The texture was another matter.
You chewed.
Then you chewed some more.
Then a little more.
It felt as though the entire fish was one enormous muscle.
I went straight back to the material I had downloaded and started looking for ways to tenderise the meat. The next portions would clearly need a marinade, perhaps lemon or pineapple, ideally for twelve to twenty-four hours.
Pineapple seemed especially promising because its enzymes can break down proteins and soften tougher meat.
So the catch that had initially looked like the greatest fishing success of the journey quickly turned into a culinary project.
Fortunately, in Port Moresby we had also found a serious supply of pepperoni.
So despite having a freezer full of fish, not every meal ended with fins.
We also made pizzas, with tomato sauce, pepperoni and whatever else we had managed to collect on board.
Strangely enough, even though we had so much fresh tuna that we could practically have opened a small fish shop, we never once made tuna pizza.
Some things simply do not occur to you precisely when they would make the most sense.
The big sailfish completely changed our attitude toward fishing. Suddenly, having one lure hanging behind the boat was not enough. We started running more rods, changing distances, weights, depths and lure sizes, and building our own theories about what would attract what.
We slowly started arriving at a few simple rules that at the time felt almost revolutionary.
A bigger lure often means a bigger fish.
A lure running deeper gives you access to something different.
With a big lure, you may wait much longer, but when something finally hits, there is a good chance you are going to have a serious problem at the other end of the line.
Naturally, all those theories remained valid only until the fish decided otherwise.
We continued catching tuna and mahi-mahi, but eventually we had to slow down. There was simply no more space.
The freezer was full.
The fridge was full.
We had more than enough food.
There is not much point killing another fish simply because you can catch it.
And so the days passed.
Sometimes there was wind, sometimes engine, sometimes complete calm. A book in your hand, rods behind the boat, and lunch made from whatever we had pulled out of the sea the day before.
What had looked at first like an endlessly long passage slowly became simply our everyday life.
Then, after almost two and a half weeks at sea, Indonesia finally began to appear ahead of us.
Our next stop was Bali.
Port Benoa.
After so much time in the Pacific, we were entering a completely different part of the world.
And we still had no idea how different the Bali in our heads would be from the Bali we were actually about to find.