Catch(up)

Well, it's been nearly a year since the last blog post, mostly because I hate bloggers, yet balanced by the fact I love the sound of my own voice, so here I am!

For what it's worth, the house was finished nearly a year ago and really isn't much different to the last photo except with the addition of the verandah roof.

The winch we use for raising and lowering the verandah roof over the front of the house during storms is pictured, but usually removed.

Otherwise life goes on much as you'd expect on a small island. We go into town a couple of times a week for coffee and chat but otherwise spend a very quiet time on the island.

Mandy made a pizza oven using the local clay and layers of coconut husk for insulation. It's keeps cooking for hours once it's up to temperature.

I've got a bit better at catching fish and can pretty much catch skipjack tuna whenever I want, but we just don't want them very much; a very meaty fish but quite dark and not something we really want more than about once or twice a month. They are pretty damn good smoked, mind you, and pretty fun to catch.

I've found some better fishing grounds now and can fairly regularly catch Giant Trevally, Green Jobfish, Coral Breems, Emperors and a few others.

I even managed to hook a marlin from the dinghy as I was speeding around for another pass through a boil-up of skipjack tuna. It was probably a good thing I lost it on a jump out of the water because I didn't have a gaf with me and Lord knows what I would have done with it if I had got it up to the boat. I now have the gaf permanently in the boat. I also hooked a yellowfin tuna but lost it to a shark while I was trying to untangle my gloves from a lure I had left in my fishing bag. Another lesson learned.

Try as I might I've failed to catch a skipjack tuna from the kayak. You really need to be going about 7 knots to maximise your chances with them and I can probably muster 2-3 knots in the kayak. It's pretty hard to even keep up with a boil-up in the kayak let alone run the lure through it but there's always a chance of getting one on the fringe so maybe I'll tick that off yet. I can get up to about 11 knots in the dinghy at full speed, which just puts me in range of the bigger game fish but I don't make it out as far as the good game fishing grounds in my dinghy so those require a great deal of luck.

My filleting knife handle broke so I used some ironwood to make a new handle. It's fantastically hard stuff and I shape it using the angle-grinder. We're using it to repair all sorts of things that are beginning to wear out or rust away here.

For a bit of a lark I put a sail on my kayak. It actually works pretty well and I can point about 25 degrees into the wind. It only does about 3 knots regardless of wind speed, either because the wind is not strong enough or the waves become too high and slow it down, but it still saves a heck of a lot of effort on paddling - although fishing and sailing it is a bit of a juggling act. Obviously it's pretty crude, just made from some scrap timber and the old tent.

We've been harvesting 2-3 papaya every day for nearly a year now so we have way more than we can eat. Just in the last couple of weeks, in the depths of the tropical winter, we've had a few days where we haven't been able to pick one but they should get going again soon I guess.

Not a lot has happened except for the passing of time.