Travel with Indigo

Heavenly Delight
One cloudless evening as Indigo was making her way due east from Tahiti to one of the Tuamotu islands we were treated to one of the many wondrous sights the heavens have to offer. Just as the day’s declining light was shading the sky to opalescent blue a glorious full moon was rising directly on the bow. As if this gift were not heavenly enough, the softly glowing Pacific sun was setting directly on our stern.  At that ineffably lovely moment, both were poised there at precisely the same height above their respective horizons. Moon fore and sun aft, you could hardly ask for more. Compounding our good fortune, next morning the sun rose on the bow and the moon set on the stern, each perfectly synchronized with the other, a visual duet of astronomic delight.

Game Fishing Award
I am pleased to report that Indigo and her crew have achieved one of the highest distinctions  possible in the arena of international game fishing. It is an achievement toward which we labored almost daily employing our collective skills to this glorious end. And the attainment is one so superior to all that has gone before that it is unlikely to be excelled at any time in this or the next century. Let me explain.

By the time Indigo reaches Brisbane, Australian she will have traveled just over 20,000 nautical miles. During a significant portion of this voyage, her crew has deployed one and sometimes two deep sea fishing lines to which were attached the most modern, technologically advanced, and alluring lures that one could buy.  In the fish world, these were tight skirts and plunging necklines. These lines were dragged behind Indigo in the conventional manner of this sport, sometimes with the lures far behind, sometimes closer in, and the vessel’s speed was altered in search of the ideal speed that would attract our quarry. Lures that dive, lures that skip and skim, lures that wiggle and wink and shake their hips were all employed in an honest and concerted effort to attract a strike. And yet, thanks to our superior and award-winning skills, not a single fish was boated, nary a one, zip, nada. There was a solitary strike, but to our good fortune the line quickly parted and our string of success was preserved.

This manner of fishing I have termed eco-angling, the objective being to preserve the endangered animals of the sea while attempting seriously to catch them. When I reflect on how many of the ocean’s finest game fish have been spared the pain and indignity of being snatched from their watery homes an air of self-righteousness comes over me. Twenty thousand miles without a catch is truly a high achievement. I think of it as Indigo’s contribution to a better planet.  We await an award from Green Peace.