September 30, 2008

Anniversary
We had a great day for our 25th wedding anniversary. We took Sequester out for a lagoon sail with 6 friends: Dave, Linda, Tempo, Polmae, Lloyd and Heinpee. We had a beautiful sunny day with light winds; perfect for sailing. The lagoon is about 14 miles long and between 3 and 6 miles wide, so we had plenty of room to troll for fish. The bottom is about 150 feet deep, with coral bommies sticking up from time to time. You can usually see the lighter colored water around the coral heads, and very often some of the bommies come right to the surface, so you don’t want to hit them with your boat. Most yachties keep well clear of them, but we were looking for fish, and that is where they hang out, so after trolling for awhile with no hits, we started playing “chicken” with the bommies, getting as close as we dared without hitting them. Then we started to get hits on the fishing lines! The guys wanted to bottom fish for awhile, so we found a bommie with a good sand patch and anchored right over it. It was a surreal feeling to be anchored on a coral head in the middle of the lagoon!
Ted and Dave each caught a fish, but the Marshallese guys were pulling them in right and left. Each time Ted or Dave hooked up, there would be lots of yelling and excitement, but the Marshallese guys were so quiet that the cooler had a half a dozen fish in it before we realized they were catching them. Linda and I wanted to take pictures of all the guys with their fish and the Marshallese thought that was pretty funny. Polmae was the master fisherman of the day, working a fishing line with his hands (no rod or reel), and catching them one after another. There was a bit of excitement when he hooked up a 3-4 foot sand shark, but it broke the line before we got it aboard. Most of the fish caught were grouper, about a foot long each. They probably caught 12-15 fish for the day. Linda cooked a great lunch casserole of rice, beef and corn and made some delicious oatmeal cookies for dessert. We had plenty of coconuts for drinking. Linda took some anniversary photos of us, so we will have a nice reminder of the day. We arrived back at the village tired and happy, with fish for dinner. A wonderful anniversary! Karen