The Fish Tale continues . . . .

So, with a lot of maneuvering of the boat to keep the fish at tension and worn out and not able to dive under the rudders to cut the string (all of which have been issues in the past for us), Courage finally reels this thing in.  I'm wearing gloves on the back swim step with the idea to pull it up by the leader, grab its tail, and put it in our 33-gallon garbage can.  Great plan.  Problem is, I had the fish and the leader and couldn't even see its tail yet.  I was pulling it onto the swim step, he's telling me no, grab the tail.  It was somewhere far away in the water!!  He came down, we pulled it onto the swim step, grabbed the tail, but I couldn't really lift it securely myself by it's tail.  He grabbed too, we lifted together and still had a hard time getting all of it above the second swim step up and above the garbage can.  We got it in, brought it to the cockpit, and we secured!!  Then took a couple of photos. . .  Cassidy and Courage were holding it; she couldn't get it by herself.  I got a great picture, which was still processing when they threw it onto the ground!!  I think it slipped forward out of Cassidy's hands, or began to wiggle, or something, but however it occurred, we had a giant fish flopping around on our cockpit floor.  They threw a towel on it, Cassidy tried to hold it down, but was being shaken around, and it was a fiasco- - a funny one, but chaos none-the-less.  Needless to say, I got some video as soon as I realized they were going to release this monster in our cockpit!  I've had some good laughs!  This bad boy measured almost 4 feet long!  There's no way I could have reached its tail without going in the water myself.  Biggest fish I've ever been involved in catching!!  We've eaten 2 great meals as well as given it to 3 other families on boats that we've met.

We came in nicely to the island, anchored out the first night and came in with daylight in the morning.

To be continued with our Galapagos tales in the next saga.

Shannon