Day 9 Nov. 28

I think the only thing that kept me going today was the fact that this was the last day. For the first 4 hours I had a bit of hope that we might actually catch a qualifying fish because we did get 3 small dorados within an hour but as the sun climbed higher in the sky I began to lose faith. I didn’t mean to fall asleep but I did. When I woke up I discovered that my throat was sun burnt. The only spot on my body that hadn’t been smothered in sunscreen and I managed to expose it to the full strength of the fireball in the sky. When we came back to the beach the winning fish were being flaunted, hanging from the rack. The biggest fish was the winning marlin weighing in at 195 kilos but that was only worth a small car as this is a sailfish tournament. The winning dorado was only 23 kilos, I have caught one a couple of years ago that was 35. And the new owner of the Chevy Silverado, first place prize for sailfish, was the guy that caught the 35-kilo sailfish on the second day. Usually the winning fish is closer to 45-50 kilos but this was an unusually bad year for the tournament. Less than half of the boats even caught one qualifying fish although the marlin is quite rare, especially one that big. Over the last decade the sailfish population has been greatly decreased due to bicatch of the huge tuna trawlers that go up and down the pacific coast. Today was also the kids’ tournament that Rob was in. He showed up at 9:00 like he was supposed to and registered at a desk. A lady tried to line up all the children for a picture on the stage at the same time that a man took them away one at a time to give them pins to show they were registered. With all the confusion this took an hour but they finally got started. Rob endured 2 hours in the sun and Mom had him all packed up to go at noon (the scheduled end time) but a man told her that they were going another hour because they got started late. Mom tried to say that Rob was out of hooks as an excuse but the official countered with, “The guy over there will give you hooks.” Rob got a hook and continued for another hour but didn’t get a single fish. Our whole family failed at this tournament. Hopefully we will do better next year.