20 Stinky Fish

Last night as I was on watch I had the most busy flying fish evening ever. I think we must have sailed through a flying fish factory or something because we ended up with about 20 stinky flying fish on our boat. The first I noticed it was when I heard one on the back of the boat and another in the dingy. Then within moments one was flopping in the cockpit. No sooner had I thrown that one out did I discover one on the side of the boat by Alyssa’s cabin window and another in the cockpit. That’s when Kirsten came running up in a panic. “I smell a fish in our bathroom”, as I went down to investigate, sure enough there was one on our bathroom floor. I tossed it out the bathroom window only to have Kirsten come up a few minutes later saying, “The smell is still strong, I think there is another one.” Lets just say that Kirsten gets a bit jumpy with these fish, kinda like when my mom sees a mouse. It comes with the occasional shrieks and face hiding behind me to protect her vision from the flip-flopping fish.

Sure enough, there was another fish in our bathroom garbage can.

Curious with the number of fish on the boat thus far, I decided to shine a light on the front trampoline of the boat. Sure enough there were over 10 fish on the trampoline. By the next morning the total count by Orin (including one fish in Dailin’s bathroom) came to over 20. I’m not sure that flying fish are the best tasting things as they are rather small… maybe we can catch a tuna or something useful next time.

UPDATE: It is now 9:16 pm the next day and Dailin just discovered that in the night a fish dropped down the hatch in their room as well and wedged itself between the wall and mattress. They thought it just stank because of the fish in the bathroom but couldn’t figure out why it was still stinking in the evening. Nothing like sleeping with a dried up fish!

8:20 pm PDT, Lat: 02° 56.242′ S, Long: 131° 34.298′ W, Course 216° T, Speed: 6.2 K, Wind: ENE 13 K, Swell: ENE 3′, Cloud Cover: 15%, Barometer: 1013 hPa, Temp: 27°C